I seem to have reached an age where my friends are turning fifty. This is why I found myself in Paris this weekend, to celebrate this momentous occasion in the life of my very good friend L. 

There’s no denying it is a milepost. A person is no longer young at fifty, the potential of the younger self has been squandered or put to good use, and the resulting life has evolved accordingly. One must face mortality, and consider how best to spend the remainder of this all-too-brief existence before all is irrevocably lost to death and decay. 

Perhaps fittingly then, we spend the first day in Paris visiting the dead. First the untold millions of mortal remains of millennia of Parisians bundled together in the catacombs: 

The medevial municipal graveyards were literally overflowing at the end of the 18th century. At the same time the limestone quarries that had once been well outside of city boundaries were being subjected to urbanisation, which resulted in several spectacular collapses; houses and entire streets were swallowed up by sinkholes as the poorly shored-up, long-forgotten mine shafts caved in under the weight of the expanding city. Such an exciting time to be a Parisian – your house might spontaneously drop thirty metres into the ground, or your basement might get flooded with partly decomposed bodies! 

Ingeniously, the authorities decided to solve both problems in one go: the mines were mapped and their walls reinforced, part of the many miles of underground corridors were consecrated, the churchyards dug up and their dead deposited in the mine shafts-turned-catacombs, instead. Anything between two and six million skeletons were transferred to the catacombs, and today they make for a gruesome reminder of our brief toil on this mortal coil: the narrow corridors are filled floor to ceiling with row upon row of skulls – nothing for the faint of heart. 

The Pantheon is a different proposition altogether: a Greek-Roman temple constructed “to house the great men of the Fatherland” (feminists might have a thing or two to say about that), it is the final resting place for the bodies of Voltaire, Rousseau, Hugo, Marie Curie – maybe she was granted a dispensation? – and others worthy of veneration. 

The building is famous for housing Foucault’s pendulum, which proves that the Earth moves – and I think we can agree THAT’s a relief to know! – but more importantly it moves the human spirit, because it is one of the most impressive buildings you will ever see, and the views from the roof of its dome is nothing short of spectacular.

Sticking with the theme of mortality, there is an adage that says that a person should plant a tree, sire an heir and write a book. All that speaks of a desire to leave behind something more lasting, and so the second day was devoted to visiting monuments:

The Louvre, the world’s greatest museum, filled to the brim with painting and sculptures, all wishing to immortalise their subjects and/or the artists behind them. It’s interesting to see, but also sobering to realise how little we know of even the most famous ones: Mona Lisa’s identity is uncertain, there is no proof Venus from Milo depicts Venus (or more accurately Aphrodite), and no one knows what Victory from Samotrace looked like. 

Another good example of the phallacy of immortality is the Arc du Triomph: ordered by Napoleon as a lasting monument over his soldiers’ bravery (and, one suspects, his own greatness), it wasn’t completed until long after the Emperor had been forced to abdicate and end his days on a forsaken island far, far away. It still makes for a good outlook point, however.

A better, living monument, still thriving in the age of e-publishing, situated right across from Notre Dame, is the wonderful bookshop Shakespeare & C:o. Today’s proprietor is the daughter of the founder, who ran it for fifty years, and it’s a wonderful shop, just the way bookstores should be but rarely are: books spill out of every nook and cranny (of which there are legion), and cover every available surface from floor to ceiling, so that you think you have alighted upon an Escher painting made up of books. If books have the ability to transport you through time and space, this bookstore is a wormhole of black star proportions, and I hope it will outlast all other monuments in Paris. 

So, death being inevitable and immortality (even by monumental works) being near impossible, what remains? Eating, drinking and making merry. And so we stroll the streets of Paris, taking in its many wonders – the galettes and cider from Normandy, the macaroons at Ladurée on Champs Elysée (where a Saudi prince and his wife are subjected to the worst service of their lives), the opulent pleasures of brasserie Chez Julien (where Edit Piaf would still feel at home), cheese platters straight from the fromagerie, gateaux from thriving patisseries and incredible breakfasts courtesy of Jozseph and Frédéric, who run the best bed and breakfast in the world. The champagne and absinthe flow, there is laughter and silliness, but a moment of poignant silence marks the end of the weekend, as we happen upon a mass in the monastery church of St Pierre, literally in the shadow of Sacrecoeur on Montmartre.

 There, before a congregation of believers, and in a moment of divine light, the Lord’s Prayer is read, and for the first time it strikes me: underneath the religion and ceremony lies a very simple message. Accept that you can’t control anything much, accept the finite nature of things, be accepting of others’ struggles and treat them kindly regardless, and be grateful for the little things. It’s not a bad credo.