40 Fun Facts About Catacombs of Paris

About how many people's bones were moved from overflowing cemeteries into the Catacombs of Paris?

The 6 million skeletons arrived between the 1780s and 1860, tipped down quarry shafts and later stacked into neat walls.

In 2004, what did Paris police find hidden in tunnels under the Trocadéro, complete with a stocked bar?

A cinema with a giant screen, seats and film reels had been secretly built by a group called les UX. When police came back, it had been dismantled and a note told them not to search.

Which company paid €350,000 in 2015 for a stunt inviting guests to sleep in the Catacombs of Paris?

Airbnb staged the sleepover for publicity. Illegal explorers called cataphiles had long been slipping into the wider tunnel network for free.

In the 2024 Netflix thriller Under Paris, what predator lurks in the city's flooded catacombs?

A shark named Lilith, a mako that has mutated to live in fresh water, swims up the Seine and breeds beneath the city.

The Catacombs of Paris are entered at the Barrière d'Enfer, two old pavilions whose name means what?

Gate of Hell is the literal meaning, taken from the old Rue d'Enfer. The square around it was later renamed for Colonel Denfert-Rochereau, whose surname sounds exactly like d'Enfer.

In 2017, thieves broke into a basement from the Catacombs of Paris and stole €250,000 worth of what?

Wine worth over €250,000 was taken after the gang got in through the tunnels, which stretch far beyond the short route tourists see.

What animals did an inspector place in a fountain in the Catacombs of Paris in 1813, where they went blind?

Goldfish were Héricart de Thury's experiment: he put four in the basin of the Samaritan Fountain, and they survived but could not breed.

In the early 1800s, what crop did growers begin raising in the dark abandoned quarries beneath southern Paris?

Mushrooms were sheltered from the weather in the tunnels, which is why the common button variety is still sold in France as the champignon de Paris.

Which Revolution figure, guillotined in 1794, lies among the anonymous bones in the Catacombs of Paris?

Robespierre was buried in the Errancis Cemetery after his execution, and its bones were later moved underground. No individual skeleton there can be identified.

A sign over the ossuary doorway in the Catacombs of Paris warns visitors to stop at the empire of what?

Death gets top billing on the lintel, one of many solemn inscriptions added around 1810 when the loose bones were rebuilt into tidy walls.

What building stone was dug from the quarries that later became the Catacombs of Paris?

Limestone from these pits built medieval churches, the Louvre castle and the city walls, leaving a honeycomb of empty galleries beneath the streets.

Which animal statue by the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty stands outside the Catacombs of Paris?

A lion by Frédéric Bartholdi dominates Place Denfert-Rochereau, a one-third-scale copy of his giant original in the town of Belfort.

The Catacombs of Paris borrowed their name from the ancient underground burial galleries of which city?

Rome had the original catacombs, tombs dug along the Appian Way. The Paris site is really an ossuary: nearly all of its bones were first buried in the city's cemeteries and moved in later.

Which 2014 horror film about a hunt for the philosopher's stone was shot in the real Catacombs of Paris?

As Above, So Below got its permit on the eve of filming, and the crew worked in both the public route and the off-limits tunnels.

Which pop star, credited under her real name Alecia Moore, co-starred in the 2007 horror film Catacombs?

Pink played the heroine's sister Carolyn in the chiller, which was mostly shot on soundstage sets in Bucharest rather than under Paris.

Which American rock band filmed the acoustic concert Alive in the Catacombs beneath Paris in 2024?

Queens of the Stone Age became the first act to play there legally with the city's permission, and stripped the set down to match the bare surroundings.

In the 1944 liberation of Paris, who ran a command post from a shelter under Place Denfert-Rochereau?

The French Resistance leader Colonel Rol-Tanguy directed the uprising from the shelter, and the avenue outside now carries his name.

Which king created a quarry inspection service in 1777 after Paris streets began collapsing into old mines?

Louis XVI set up the inspectorate after a stretch of road dropped into a forgotten mine in 1774. Its first chief, Charles-Axel Guillaumot, went on to create the ossuary.

To avoid angering Parisians and the Church, when were bones carted to the Catacombs in the 1780s?

At night, wagons draped in black cloth rolled out of the city behind chanting priests, then tipped their loads down a quarry shaft.

Which overflowing cemetery beside Les Halles market was the first emptied into the Catacombs of Paris?

Holy Innocents had been in use for nearly ten centuries before it closed in 1780. A market took its place, and the cemetery's old fountain still stands on the square.

In 1780, what gave way beside the largest cemetery in Paris under the weight of a mass grave?

A cellar wall in a house on the Rue de la Lingerie burst under the pressure, and the cemetery was shut for good. Burials inside the city were then banned.

Because exposures took so long, what did Nadar pose as workers in his 1861 photos of the Catacombs of Paris?

Mannequins stood in for the labourers during three months of experiments that produced some of the first photographs ever taken by artificial light.

What is said to have identified Philibert Aspairt's body, found under Paris eleven years after he vanished?

His key ring from the Val-de-Grâce hospital, where he was doorkeeper, is said to have given him away. The tale has him lost in 1793 only a short walk from an exit staircase.

The Catacombs of Paris lie in which Left Bank district, also home to a famous skyscraper?

Montparnasse is home to the Place Denfert-Rochereau entrance, and its big cemetery also sits on top of old quarries that were later filled with bones.

What was the ancient name of Paris, which geologists borrowed for the rock layer the Catacombs were cut into?

Lutetia lent its name to the Lutetian, a span of geological time in the Eocene for which this site is an international reference.

Which Saint-Saëns piece did an orchestra play at a secret midnight concert in the Catacombs of Paris in 1897?

Danse macabre was on the bill beside Chopin's Funeral March, played by 45 musicians for about a hundred invited guests who had been told to arrive discreetly.

What were the two pavilions at the entrance to the Catacombs of Paris built to do in the 1780s?

Collect taxes on goods entering the city: that was the job of the wall these tollhouses belonged to, which made them an early target for rioters in July 1789.

Act 3 of which Puccini opera is set at the Barrière d'Enfer, the gateway where the Catacombs of Paris begin?

La Bohème opens its third act at the barrier on a February morning, with Mimì arriving to find the tavern where her friends are staying.

Which great chemist, guillotined in the French Revolution, has bones in the Catacombs of Paris?

Antoine Lavoisier, who named oxygen, was executed in 1794 and buried in the Errancis Cemetery, whose contents were later carted underground.

What covered the Paris region in the Eocene epoch and laid down the rock the Catacombs are cut from?

A tropical sea left metres of sediment that hardened into rock, and fossil shells of giant sea snails still turn up in the walls.

Tourists see about one mile of the Catacombs of Paris; roughly how long is the whole tunnel network?

Around 170 miles of old quarry galleries run beneath the city, and the ossuary open to visitors is only a tiny walled-off corner of them.

The UX, a secret group of explorers under Paris, covertly repaired the broken clock of which monument?

The Panthéon clock had been out of order since the 1960s when the team set up a hidden workshop under the dome. A court later cleared the restorers of any offence.

What was traced along the ceiling of the Catacombs of Paris around 1810 to guide early visitors?

A black line served as an Ariadne's thread through the maze, ordered by inspector Héricart de Thury when he began regular tours in 1809.

In the Crypt of the Passion in the Catacombs of Paris, shin bones are stacked around a pillar in what shape?

A barrel of neatly stacked bones disguises a plain support pillar, one of several structural props that the designers dressed up as monuments.

Which French ruler toured the Catacombs of Paris with his son in 1860?

Napoleon III made the descent while his prefect Haussmann was rebuilding the city above, work that sent the last cartloads of bones underground.

During World War II, German forces built a bunker in the tunnels of Paris beneath what kind of building?

A high school in the 6th arrondissement, the Lycée Montaigne, sat on top of the shelter while other parts of the same maze hid people working against the occupation.

Under Paris, a quarryman named Décure carved a model of Port-Mahon, a fortress on which Mediterranean island?

Minorca was where the old soldier is said to have been held by the English. He carved after his shifts from 1777 to 1782 and was killed when the roof fell in as he dug a staircase.

Which legendary figure, buried in a Paris churchyard in 1703, is said to lie among the Catacombs' bones?

The Man in the Iron Mask was buried at Saint-Paul under the name Marchioly after dying in the Bastille, and that churchyard was later emptied into the quarries.

Since 2002, the Catacombs of Paris have been run by which museum devoted to the history of the city?

Musée Carnavalet took charge in May 2002, and unlike the city's free collection museums the bone galleries have kept an entry fee.

A well of very clear water on the Catacombs of Paris route is nicknamed the quarrymen's what?

Footbath is the joke: the water is so clear that an unwary visitor could miss it and step straight in from the last submerged steps.