If Paris is called the City of Light, it also hides terrible secrets, which melt into the night... A few districts away from the catacombs, on theÎle de la Cité, you will discover some very surprising practices, which are chilling. Be careful where you walk! But you will have to be discreet to have access to this mystery, located in the courtyard of 26 rue Chanoinesse, so as not to disturb the current inhabitants, who are still alive. If the door is open, which is often the case during the day, enter and go to the end of the narrow courtyard, to look at the ground, made of tombstones!
You can see fragments of inscriptions in gothic letters in the stone, worn by time. These cobblestones on which you walk are the graves of monks, from the cemeteries of the district. Numerous churches, convents and monasteries covered the surface of the city in the 18th century, now disappeared. In the midst of reconstruction, the stones of its churches and tombs were reused for other monuments, or to pave the floors, as is the case here, in order to keep the feet dry in case of flood of the Seine. Strange, isn't it, to walk on history and imagine a skeleton long gone under our feet?
Moreover, the rue Chanoinesse and the Île de la Cité itself are full of surprising little anecdotes. This street, which takes its name from the canons, clergymen attached to the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral, is one of the oldest in the capital . Don't miss the sublime wisteria in the spring, on the front of the Vieux Paris d'Arcole!
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