Can you touch the catacombs?

The unique and fragile ossuary presented at the Paris Catacombs must not be touched. Group leaders must make their groups aware of the essential rules for preserving the works and be considerate towards other visitors. It is fordbidden to smoke, eat or drink inside the Paris Catacombs.



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Even though it's illegal to access parts of the catacombs other than the site open to visitors, there's a group of urban explorers called “Cataphiles” who navigate the tunnels secretly.

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Despite the ritual with which they were transferred, the bones had simply been dumped into the tunnels in large heaps. Slowly but surely the quarrymen lined the walls with tibias and femurs punctuated with skulls which form the basis of most of the decorations that tourists see today.

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The temperature underground in the Catacombs is about 57° F (14° C), much cooler than Paris in summer. Bring a sweater, jacket, or scarf to help with the chill.

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Some areas of the tunnels even became shrines for martyrs buried there. But after Christianity was legalized in 313 AD, funerals moved above ground, and by the 5th Century, the use of catacombs as grave sites dwindled, though they were still revered as sacred sites where pilgrims would come to worship.

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However, the strong smell of the Paris catacombs is apparently what all the initial signs were warning sensitive visitors about. At best, it could be likened to the dusty, incense-infused scent of old stone churches, but with an underlying malaise that can only be attributed to the contents of multiple cemeteries.

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The Paris Catacombs have a fascinating history which dates back to ancient times, and is the final resting place of over 6 million Parisians.

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Hygiene. Both catacombs were dug largely for hygiene reasons. Rotting bodies in the middle of a city is not ideal, especially when they start piling up as they did in Paris. Both catacombs were created to avoid disease, but in Rome, they thought ahead.

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The final resting place of six million Parisians, the catacombs are not for the faint of heart! Sixty-five feet beneath the lively streets of Paris lies what is perhaps the City of Light's unlikeliest attraction.

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That year, a prolonged period of spring rain caused a wall around Les Innocents to collapse, spilling rotting corpses into a neighboring property. The city needed a better place to put its dead. So it went to the tunnels, moving bones from the cemeteries five stories underground into Paris' former quarries.

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In September 2004, French police discovered an underground movie theatre run by La Mexicaine De Perforation. The makeshift theatre contained a movie screen, a well stocked bar, and a kitchen. Telephones and electricity were brought in from an unknown location.

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In 1789, Paris, France, the world, the course of history was rocked by the French Revolution. From around this date, people were buried directly in the catacombs. This came to an end in 1860 when people ceased to be buried in the catacombs.

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Among the many anonymous people who rest in the catacombs, there are some celebrities from French history such as Nicolas Fouquet (Louis XIV's superintendent of finance), Colbert, Rabelais, Jules Hardouin-Mansart, Racine, Blaise Pascal, Maral, Lully, Danton, Robespierre, Lavoisier but also the 1343 people guillotined ...

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The tour of the Catacombs is deep underground. The walking route is about 2km, about 1.25 miles and the average independent visit takes around one hour. You will first descend 130 steps down to the Catacombs and then at the end it's an 83-step climb to street level.

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It's been illegal to visit the catacombs since 1955, aside from a mile of tunnels that comprise the official Musée Carnavalet. A sign over the entrance reads “Arrête, c'est ici l'empire de la mort!” (“Stop!

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It took the city 12 years to move all the bones—from bodies numbering between 6 and 7 million—into the catacombs. Some of the oldest date back as far as the Merovingian era, more than 1,200 years ago. Beginning during the French Revolution, the dead were buried directly in the catacomb's ossuaries .

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