The Catacombs of Paris

OVERVIEW

The Catacombs of Paris are underground ossuaries holding the remains of more than six million people. They were built into the city's ancient stone quarries, which extend south from the former Barrière d'Enfer city gate, as part of the effort to deal with the overflowing cemeteries — above all the Cimetière des Innocents, whose mass graves had begun to collapse into neighbouring cellars.

HISTORY

The bones were moved by night, in processions of covered carts, from 1786 onwards, and were later arranged into the walls of femurs and skulls that visitors see today. Only a small, lit and policed section is open; the wider quarry network beneath the city runs for hundreds of kilometres and is illegal to enter.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The official route is one of the most-visited places in Paris and the accounts attached to it are the ordinary ones — cold, disorientation, the sense of being watched. The serious material concerns the unofficial network: cataphiles have reported getting lost for days, and in 2017 two teenagers were found after three days underground. The entry records an ossuary of six million people and a labyrinth that has genuinely swallowed people, and does not need to embroider either.

VISITING

Timed tickets, 131 steps down and 112 up, 14°C, no large bags. **Do not enter the unofficial network** — it is illegal, unmapped, prone to flooding and collapse, and people have died in it.