Beneath the streets of Paris is an area of about 11,000 square meters which holds the remains of approximately 6 million dead. The bones of the famous - like Lady Pompadour - are intermixed with those of the lower classes. Spread throughout this underground graveyard are plaques, pillars and stone facades inscribed in various languages with the prayers and musings of the visitors to this underground realm, some of them quite well known. In the late 1940’s two intrepid explorers and scholars - Martin Cohn and Alain Bodian - spent many perilous weeks underground transcribing the plaques and other memorials in this dark, deep vault. This book is the published result of their great work, written in both French and English, and including the original, translated source material.