The Paris catacombs are a cool 14 Celsius / 57 Fahrenheit year-round, and often a bit damp as well, so this isn't the place for sundresses! Opt for comfortable shoes to navigate the slightly uneven terrain, and bring a jacket for comfort.
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How to dress ? You can leave your boots at home, but be sure to wear comfortable shoes! However, waiting in front of the entrance can be long, even in winter, so don't forget to dress warmly.
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.
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.
On exiting the Catacombs you will be searched to make sure you have brought no bones with you. There are no toilets or facilities during the tour and note you may have been queueing for some time before entry. There are guided tours you can purchase.
Beneath the scorching Parisian streets, there are several hidden swimming pools in old tunnels that have been mapped by a fearless diver, even though it is illegal to enter.
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.
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.
Like Rome, it has vast underlying passageways and quarries, called catacombs. This labyrinth of tunnels is thought to cover around 800 hectares — that's nearly 2,000 acres — beneath the city, though only a small part is explored and open to the public.
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.
It may have been one of the largest and most prosperous cities in the Western World but its own rapid growth was causing the city's cemeteries to literally overflow with the bodies of the dead.
The city stopped moving bones into the ossuaries in 1860. Today, a little more than a mile of the catacombs is open for visitors to explore. The public entrance is located in Paris' 14th arrodissement, at 1, avenue du Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy. It takes about 45 minutes to walk through.
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.
The Catacombs of Paris is an underground ossuary in Paris that houses the remains of nearly six million people. Back in 1786, the entire underground population of Paris' cemeteries was relocated to quarry tunnels outside the city limits. Visitors can now explore the caverns and tunnels where the bodies were relocated.
Is a Tour of the Paris Catacombs Worth It? Short answer: Yes, it most definitely is. The area is an engineering marvel and full of significance—you'll find yourself getting more intrigued by the minute! Not to mention, guided tours have access to areas that are off-limits to the public.