The Cemetery of the Innocents was so overpopulated that in 1780 the wall of a hotel collapsed and bones flooded the basement. It was then that it was decided the cemetery would be closed and the bones transferred to the stone quarries underground.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
The Largest Necropolis in the WorldSix million skeletons live underground the streets of Paris. All the human bones are painstakingly stacked and arranged, except for the random pelvis thrown on top of skulls. Try to find two of the skulls with teeth.
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 .
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.
Some passages can be very low, narrow, or partially flooded. Because of these dangers, accessing the other parts of the Catacombs has been illegal since 2 November, 1955.
It's currently estimated that the catacombs consist of 320 kilometers of tunnels, but specialists have only mapped a portion of the ossuaries. The city sometimes relies on the knowledge of local cataphiles, urban explorers who tour the mines illegally.
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. The bones were dumped into two quarry wells and then distributed and piled into the galleries by the quarry workers.
A good guide is indispensable, and many guides occasionally refer to a map. Because of these dangers, accessing the catacombs without official escort has been illegal since 2 November 1955.
The complex system of tunnels that would later be known as the catacombs were first excavated by the Etruscan people that lived in the region predating the Romans. These tunnels were first excavated in the process of mining for various rock resources such as limestone and sandstone.
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!
The tunnels that are accessible today on catacomb tours are only a fraction of the total catacombs, which stretch for miles. And even then, archaeologists believe that there are parts of the catacombs which still remain hidden. The full extent of the catacombs may never be known.