What famous people are in the catacombs?

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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A clutch of noteworthy remains were transferred from Parisian cemeteries to join Robespierre in the Paris Catacombs, including those of architect Salomon de Brosse, who designed Paris's stately Luxembourg Palace; famous French fairytale and fable writers Charles Perrault and Jean de La Fontaine, and painter Simon Vouet ...

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1. The Catacombs of Paris. Among the most famous catacombs in the world, the Paris Catacombs are underground quarries, housing approximately six million human skeletons.

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Paris is one of the great medieval cities of Europe. 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.

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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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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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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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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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The Catacombs are about 65 feet deep, roughly the height of a five-story building if you turned it upside down. It takes 131 steps to get to the bottom of the Catacombs, so wear your walking shoes.

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Odessa Catacombs The largest catacomb system in the world. Over 1,500 miles of catacombs are carved into the limestone beneath the city.

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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 catacombs are subterranean passageways that were used as place of burial for a number of centuries. The burials of Jewish, pagan and early Christian Roman citizens in the catacombs began in the second century and ended in the fifth century.

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During the Napoleon Empire, it was decided that the bones would be arranged in a necropolis emulating the roman ones, which explains the surprising aesthetic, effectively creating a city of the dead underneath the city of the living.

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Where were the dead before they were put in the catacombs? The tombs, common graves and charnel house were emptied of their bones, which were transported at night to avoid hostile reactions from the Parisian population and the Church.

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These catacombs satisfied the economic and practical requirements and the biblical dictate, so Jews found their perfect burial location for common people but also for scribes.

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This isn't the first time that people have been lost in catacombs. According to Buzzfeed, legend has it that Philibert Aspairt died after getting lost in the underground maze of the Paris catacombs in 1793 — and his body wasn't found until eleven years after his death. (Ironically and tragically, close to an exit.)

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