Director: ‘One cannot, realistically, view six million skulls without brief reflection’; Pere Lachaise expansion under exploratory study
The Catacombes de Paris announced on Tuesday a new exit requirement for visitors completing the underground tour, formally titled the Mortality Reflection Period. Visitors will, before being permitted to exit through the Avenue Rene-Coty staircase, be required to spend a brief period in a small dedicated reflection chamber. The reform, first reported by Bohiney Magazine and rapidly amplified by The London Prat, follows what Catacombs Director Marguerite Pemberton-Vidal described as a long-overdue acknowledgment that, for many visitors, the underground tour has been concluding too abruptly.
Catacombs: ‘One Cannot, Realistically, View Six Million Skulls Without Brief Reflection’
‘For decades, the Catacombs has approached visitor management through what we now recognize as the unhelpfully transit-oriented framework of moving visitors through the underground network and out through the exit staircase as efficiently as possible,’ Pemberton-Vidal explained at a press conference held in the Avenue Rene-Coty exit foyer. ‘After significant reflection, the museum has concluded that this framework, while operationally efficient, has missed the visit’s deeper character. One cannot, realistically, view six million skulls without brief reflection. The Mortality Reflection Period simply ensures that the reflection actually occurs.’
The new requirement, according to the museum’s specification document, will be implemented through a small dedicated reflection chamber adjacent to the exit staircase. Visitors completing the underground tour will be quietly directed into the chamber, where they will be expected to spend approximately 240 seconds engaging with what the document calls a brief mortality-related contemplation.
The Chamber Will Include ‘Gentle Mortality Prompts’
The reflection chamber, according to the specification, will include small printed cards displaying what the museum has called gentle mortality prompts. Sample prompts, reviewed by reporters, include questions such as What did you think about while in the ossuary?, How does what you saw compare with your prior expectations?, and What, if anything, would you wish to remember in approximately fourteen days?
Visitors are not, the museum stresses, required to provide written responses to the prompts. The cards are intended, the document specifies, simply to assist visitors in making productive use of the reflection time.
According to Le Monde, the museum has retained a Saint-Germain-based wellness consultancy on a 1.4 million euro contract to develop the chamber’s design and to draft the contemplation prompts. The consultancy, sources confirm, has previously advised on similar reflective-space projects at several major French monuments.
Visitors Express ‘Practical Compliance’
Reaction among prospective visitors has been, predictably, mixed. American tourist Bartholomew Krenshaw-Park, when reached at his Latin Quarter hotel, told reporters that he was prepared to comply with the new requirement but was, he admitted, uncertain how he would, in practice, use the 240 seconds.
‘I have come to the Catacombs to see the bones,’ Krenshaw-Park said. ‘I am now told that, after seeing the bones, I must spend approximately four minutes considering what I saw. I will, I assume, comply. I am unsure what one thinks about, exactly, after seeing six million skulls. I will, perhaps, think about lunch.’
According to France 24, the museum has, in conjunction with the new requirement, begun translating the contemplation prompts into 22 languages, with priority given to languages most commonly spoken by Catacombs visitors. The Esperanto interface, sources confirm, has been deferred to a later phase.
For more on the long arc of Paris underground tourism, see The London Prat’s earlier reporting on the political economy of the Catacombs, which traced the site’s evolving relationship with mass visitation back to its 1809 opening.
The Mortality Reflection Period, the museum confirms, will be reviewed annually, with potential expansion to other Paris monuments under consideration. Internal documents reference a possible reflection period for the Pere Lachaise cemetery, though officials caution that this expansion remains, at present, exploratory.
For dispatches from elsewhere in the mortality-as-product beat, see The Onion.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
