I’ve been to Paris quite a few times now, but I have never managed to visit the catacombs. Despite solo-traveling a lot, I’ve never been alone in Paris, nor have I had a traveling companion who wanted to visit the Catacombs as much as I did. So I was thrilled to be able to prioritise it on the most recent visit.
But why did I want to visit? Readers will know my draw to the gothic and the macabre – a love of all things haunted and dark – which is why I’ve visited ossuaries and Victorian cemeteries. Or maybe I just wanted to visit because I read too much Anne Rice at a formative age. Who knows!
The catacombs are really just a series of ossuaries built to try to get a grasp on Paris’ overflowing cemetery problem in the 1700s. Now the tunnel network originally built during the Gallo-Roman times to connect Paris’ stone quarries house the remains of about 6 million people. The ‘official’ section of the catacombs is situated in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. Extending over 1.7 km, twenty metres beneath the Parisian asphalt, this is the part that is open to the public, who can descend into this eerie underworld at the Place Denfert-Rochereau for a small admission fee. This is now a museum of the City of Paris (under the auspices of the Musée Carnavalet), which attracts about 300,000 visitors per year. However, there are miles and miles of tunnels that are not open to visitors – and not all of them are used as ossuaries. There’s a term for people who like to find unofficial entrances to the catacombs and explore them – cataphile. I should say that it is illegal to explore the catacombs on your own.
When you visit the catacombs, a sign above reads Arrête! C’est ici l’empire de la Mort (“Stop! This is the empire of Death”). I almost fist-pumped with joy to be in my own (slightly more tourist-filled) version of the 2014 film ‘As Above So Below’. For the fairytale lovers amongst us, it’s almost impossible to know whose bones are in the catacombs, but historians are almost 100% certain that the bones of Charles Perrault (Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, etc) are in there.
The entrance to the catacombs is at 1 av. du Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy 75014 Paris. Due to COVID, you must pre-book tickets on the website.
Have you ever visited the Paris Catacombs?
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