The Catacombs of Paris

The Catacombs are a labyrinth of tunnels underneath the city of Paris. Twenty meters underground (equivalent to a five-story building), the catacombs house the remains of approximately six million Parisians.  Beginning in the 12th century,  the original purpose of the catacombs was to mine limestone quarries for the huge quantities of stone to build Notre Dame, the Louvre, the city ramparts and other buildings. However, it wasn't until the 18th century that the catacombs became known as the Empire of the Dead, when they became the solution to overcrowding in the city's cemeteries.

The cemeteries of large churches in Paris became overwhelmed because of population growth and subsequent generations of the dead. (For example, it is estimated half of Paris’ population of 100,000 died in the Black Plague of the 14th century.) Disease due to contaminated water and air caused by improper burials, open mass graves, and earth charged with decomposing organic matter afflicted areas around the cemeteries. It was decided to create three new large-scale suburban cemeteries and to condemn all others existing within the city limits. The remains of all condemned cemeteries would be moved discreetly to a renovated section of Paris' abandoned quarries.  In 1786, the former quarries were blessed and consecrated, turning them into the Paris Catacombs.

The métro station Denfert-Rochereau is across the street from the entrance to the Catacombs.

The Lion of Belfort in the Place Denfert-Rochereau

Place Denfert-Rochereau is a public square located in the 14th arrondissement in Montparnasse.  It is a major intersection and one of the largest squares on the left bank. The square is named after Pierre Denfert-Rochereau, the French commander who organized the defense at the siege of Belfort  during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871). It is dominated by the Lion of Belfort statue (a smaller version of the original in the town of Belfort ) by Frederic Bartholdi .

 Entry to the Catacombs sign

A doorway in an unassuming little green building is the entrance to the Catacombs.

"La Visite" is an illustration in a small gallery prior to descending a narrow spiral stone stairwell of 133 steps to the catacombs below.

The Catacombs are a huge tourist attraction in modern-day Paris. They started attracting visitors  even before the last bones were moved in 1814, and they were already a major attraction just over 50 years later. I tried to visit the Catacombs twice before, hoping to arrive at a time when the line to get in wasn’t blocks long. Only a limited number of people at a time are allowed in, further slowing down the process. Finally, I reserved a date and bought a skip-the-line pass for a guided tour. It was worth it.

A poster in the gallery illustrating an early visit to the Catacombs

A low-ceilinged, dimly-lit tunnel to the ossuary

A black line leads the way through the tunnels.

Avenue de Montsouris 

Signs below-ground indicated streets above-ground. In the event of a street collapse above the catacombs, the investigators marked the tunnel walls with the names of the corresponding above-ground streets. These two-century-old signs are still used for navigation.

In total, the winding catacombs stretch over 186 miles, but only ½ a mile is open to the public. Though the official tour only passes through the quarries in the 14th arrondissement, there are actually quarries in the 5th, 6th, 12th, 13th, 15th, and 16th arrondissements.  The catacombs offered space to bury the dead, but because the catacombs are directly under Paris streets,  large foundations cannot be built and cave-ins have destroyed buildings. For this reason, there are few tall buildings in this area.

This work was begun in 1777 par Décure AKA Beausejour a veteran of his majesty

 and finished in 1782.

The fortress of Port-Mahon in the Balearic Islands in the western Mediterranean

Sculptures in the Port-Mahon corridor were created by a quarryman and veteran of Louis XV's army, years before the bodies moved in. The main sculpture is a model of the fortress of Port-Mahon, a large island town where the creator, François Décure, is believed to have been held prisoner by the English during the Seven Years War. Décure tragically died in the collapse of a staircase he was building so that people could come to visit his works of art. 

An arched passage is the access ramp between the second and first levels of the quarry.

The catacombs in their first years were a disorganized repository of bones, but Louis-Etienne Héricart de Thury, head of the Paris mine inspection service from 1810, undertook renovations that would transform the underground caverns into a bizarre attraction. In addition to directing the stacking of skulls and femurs into the patterns seen in the catacombs today, he used the cemetery decorations he could find to complement the walls of bones. He also added signage bearing inscriptions that were warnings, descriptions or poetic musings about the nature of the ossuary.

Obelisks at the entrance to the ossuary

Ancient Egyptians placed them in pairs at the entrance to temples.

Halt! This is the realm of the dead 

Please don’t touch anything or smoke in the ossuary

Small bones, like fingers and vertebrae, and bones that don’t stack well, like ribs and pelvises, are first placed against the wall, and then bones like femurs are used to contain the other bones. Skulls don’t stack nicely but they are used to provide macabre décor.

A curved wall of bones in the ossuary

Bones from Saint John’s Cemetery

No attempt was made to identify or separate individual bodies, but each set of bones was marked with a plaque signifying the cemetery they came from and the year in which they were moved. In total, remains from 19 cemeteries, 145 monasteries and 160 religious areas with proper burial grounds were moved to their final resting place in the Paris Catacombs.

This plaque probably identifies the cemetery that used to belong to the present-day parish of St Leu-St Gilles.The church houses a shrine with the relics of St Helena, mother of Constantine the Great.

The bones behind the nicely stacked front wall are in no particular order

A façade of bones

A three-walled niche of bones

Created haphazardly beneath the surface city, these quarries became increasingly unstable over time. When a street collapsed in 1774, Parisian authorities investigated the galleries and reinforced weak areas.

Alternating rows of femur bones and skulls

Venez, gens du monde, venez dans ces demeures silencieuses, et votre ame alors tranquille, sera frappee de la voix qui s’eleve de leur anterior: C’est ici que le plus grands des maitres, Le Tombeau, tient son ecole de verite. “Meditation among the tombs,” by James Hervey 1745-1747

(Come people of the world, come into these silent abodes, and then your peaceful soul will be struck by the voice which rises from its inner recesses: It is here that the greatest of masters, the Tomb, holds its school of truth.)

The Crypt of the Sepulchral Lamp

The first monument built in the catacombs is in the Place de Saint-Laurent, where the bones from the Saint-Laurent Cemetery were arranged. The Sepulchral Lamp was originally used by the quarrymen to give light and to check airflow, but de Thury kept it as a centerpiece for this chamber. 

Marker from Église Saint- Laurent

A wall of bones artistically arranged in the Place de Saint-Laurent

The practice of burying the newly dead directly in the catacombs began after the French Revolution. During the Revolution, people were buried directly in the Catacombs. Guillotine victims ended up there, too, including the likes of Maximilien Robespierre, Antoine Lavoisier, and Georges Danton, all beheaded in 1794.The final transfer of bones was undertaken in 1859, and the work was finally completed in 1860. Seven years later, the catacombs were open to the public.

On August 10, 1792, an angry mob stormed the Tuileries Palace in search of the royal family. The King’s Swiss Guards fought off the mob and allowed the royal family to escape but were massacred in the end. The marker memorializes the bones of the Paris mob. (FYI  The Swiss Guards are memorialized by markers at the Chapelle Expiatoire, where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette are interred.)

The Rotonde des Tibias 

The barrel-shaped display of skulls and shin bones disguises a structural reinforcement pillar.

The last part of the tour passes by the tombstone of Françoise Géllain, better known as Madame Legros (1749-1821.)

At great personal cost, Mme Legros secured the freedom of Jean Henri Latude (1725-1805) from the Bastille prison after 35 years of off-again, on-again imprisonment. For 3 years, she devoted herself to correcting a miscarriage of justice; that is, the severity of his prison sentences exacted for his minor infractions. The French Academy gave her a gold medal for virtue (1784.)  I think Latude was a scalawag but not a dangerous criminal. He secretly sent Madame de Pompadour a box of poison and then informed her of the plot against her life in hopes that he would get a reward for warning her. That was the first time he was put in the Bastille prison in 1749. He was also an engaging writer whose memoires are fun to read.

The last gallery in the ossuary tour passes straight under the Rue Dareau, formerly called Rue des Catacombes.   A winding stairway of 83 steps takes the visitor back to the surface. Supposedly, there are ossuary watchmen who make sure no one takes a “souvenir” from the catacombs, but no one checked us this time.

Even though people were touring the Catacombs starting in 1867, the historic importance of the tunnels continued. They were used by members of the French Resistance during World War II as they hid from the Germans, and the Germans also used a portion of the tunnels during World War II as a bunker. Even to this day, the catacombs have a special attraction  for urban explorers known as “cataphiles” (those who love catacombs.) Among a certain Paris subculture, exploring the forbidden areas of the quarries is considered a sport. It has been estimated that as many as 300 Cataphiles enter the catacombs each week via secret entrances, and although police patrols fine trespassers, and maintenance workers seal off illicit entrances, the maze of tunnels is just too extensive to keep out the Cataphiles.