The Catacombs of Paris (french: Catacombes de Paris, ) are underground
ossuaries
An ossuary is a chest, box, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains. They are frequently used where burial space is scarce. A body is first buried in a temporary grave, then after some years the ...
in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
,
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
, which hold the remains of more than six million people in a small part of a tunnel network built to consolidate Paris's ancient
stone quarries
A quarry is a type of open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some jurisdictions to reduce their environ ...
. Extending south from the ("Gate of Hell") former city gate, this ossuary was created as part of the effort to eliminate the city's overflowing cemeteries. Preparation work began shortly after a 1774 series of basement wall collapses around the
Holy Innocents' Cemetery
The Holy Innocents' Cemetery (French: Cimetière des Saints-Innocents or Cimetière des Innocents) is a defunct cemetery in Paris that was used from the Middle Ages until the late 18th century. It was the oldest and largest cemetery in Paris and h ...
added a sense of urgency to the cemetery-eliminating measure, and from 1786, nightly processions of covered wagons transferred remains from most of Paris's cemeteries to a mine shaft opened near the
The ossuary remained largely forgotten until it became a novelty-place for concerts and other private events in the early 19th century; after further renovations and the construction of accesses around , it was opened to public visitation from 1874. Since 2013, the Catacombs have numbered among the fourteen City of Paris Museums managed by . Although the ossuary comprises only a small section of the underground
mines of Paris
The mines of Paris (french: carrières de Paris – "quarries of Paris") comprise a number of abandoned, subterranean mines under Paris, France, connected together by galleries. Three main networks exist; the largest, known as the ("large south ...
, Parisians currently often refer to the entire tunnel network as the catacombs.
History
Paris' cemeteries
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
's earliest burial grounds were to the southern outskirts of the Roman-era Left Bank city. In ruins after the
Western Roman Empire
The Western Roman Empire comprised the western provinces of the Roman Empire at any time during which they were administered by a separate independent Imperial court; in particular, this term is used in historiography to describe the period fr ...
's 5th-century end and the ensuing
Frankish
Frankish may refer to:
* Franks, a Germanic tribe and their culture
** Frankish language or its modern descendants, Franconian languages
* Francia, a post-Roman state in France and Germany
* East Francia, the successor state to Francia in Germany ...
invasions, Parisians eventually abandoned this settlement for the marshy Right Bank: from the 4th century, the first known settlement there was on higher ground around a Saint-Etienne church and burial ground (behind the present
Hôtel de Ville), and urban expansion on the Right Bank began in earnest after other ecclesiastical landowners filled in the marshlands from the late 10th century. Thus, instead of burying its dead away from inhabited areas as usual, the Paris Right Bank settlement began with cemeteries near its centre.
The most central of these cemeteries, a burial ground around the 5th-century Notre-Dame-des-Bois church, became the property of the Saint-Opportune parish after the original church was demolished by the 9th-century
Norman
Norman or Normans may refer to:
Ethnic and cultural identity
* The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries
** People or things connected with the Norm ...
invasions. When it became its own parish associated with the church of the "
Saints Innocents" from 1130, this burial ground, filling the land between the present
rue Saint-Denis,
rue de la Ferronnerie
The Rue de la Ferronnerie is a street in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, in the Les Halles area.
History
* Before 1229 the name of the street was ''rue de la Charronnerie (ou des Charrons)''. The street had its current name in 1229.
* Henry ...
,
rue de la Lingerie and the
rue Berger
''Ruta graveolens'', commonly known as rue, common rue or herb-of-grace, is a species of ''Ruta'' grown as an ornamental plant and herb. It is native to the Balkan Peninsula. It is grown throughout the world in gardens, especially for its bluis ...
, had become the city's principal cemetery.
By the end of the same century "
Saints Innocents" was neighbour to the principal Parisian marketplace
Les Halles
Les Halles (; 'The Halls') was Paris' central fresh food market. It last operated on January 12, 1973, after which it was "left to the demolition men who will knock down the last three of the eight iron-and-glass pavilions""Les Halles Dead at 200 ...
, and already filled to overflowing. To make room for more burials, the long-dead were exhumed and their bones packed into the roofs and walls of "charnier" galleries built inside the cemetery walls. By the end of the 18th century, the central burial ground was a two-metre-high () mound of earth filled with centuries of Parisian dead, plus the remains from the
Hôtel-Dieu In French-speaking countries, a hôtel-Dieu ( en, hostel of God) was originally a hospital for the poor and needy, run by the Catholic Church. Nowadays these buildings or institutions have either kept their function as a hospital, the one in Paris b ...
hospital and the Morgue; other Parisian parishes had their own burial grounds, but the conditions in
Les Innocents
Les Innocents is a French rock and pop duet consisting of Jean-Philippe Nataf (nicknamed Jipé, vocals, guitar) and Jean-Christophe Urbain (nicknamed Jean-Chri, vocals, guitar, keyboards) from 1982 to 1999 and 2013 onwards. Former members includ ...
cemetery were the worst.
A series of ineffective decrees limiting the use of the cemetery did little to remedy the situation, and it was not until the late 18th century that it was decided to create three new large-scale suburban burial grounds on the outskirts of the city, and to condemn all existing parish cemeteries within city limits.
The future ossuary: Paris's former mines
![Plan paris gerards1908 jms](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Plan_paris_gerards1908_jms.jpg)
Much of the Left Bank area rests upon rich
Lutetian limestone
Lutetian limestone (in French, ''calcaire lutécien'', and formerly ''calcaire grossier'') — also known as “Paris stone” — is a variety of limestone particular to the Paris, France, area. It has been a source of wealth as an economic and ...
deposits. This stone built much of the city, but it was extracted in suburban locations away from any habitation. Because of the post 12th-century haphazard mining technique of digging wells down to the deposit and extracting it horizontally until depletion, many of these (often illicit) mines were uncharted, and when depleted, often abandoned and forgotten. Paris had annexed its suburbs many times over the centuries, and by the 18th century many of its arrondissements (administrative districts) were or included previously mined territories.
The undermined state of the Left Bank was known to architects as early 17th-century construction of the
Val-de-Grâce
The (' or ') was a military hospital located at in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, France. It was closed as a hospital in 2016.
History
The church of the was built by order of Queen Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII. After the birth of h ...
hospital (most of its building expenses were due to its foundations), but a series of mine cave-ins beginning 1774 with the collapse of a house along the "rue d'Enfer" (near today's crossing of the Avenue Denfert-Rochereau and the
boulevard Saint-Michel) caused King
Louis XVI
Louis XVI (''Louis-Auguste''; ; 23 August 175421 January 1793) was the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as ''Citizen Louis Capet'' during the four months just before he was ...
to name a commission to investigate the state of the Parisian underground. This resulted in the creation of the ''inspection Générale des Carrières'' (Inspection of Mines) service.
Ossuary creation
The need to eliminate Les Innocents gained urgency from May 31, 1780, when a basement wall in a property adjoining the cemetery collapsed under the weight of the mass grave behind it. The cemetery was closed to the public and all ''intra muros'' (Latin: "within the
itywalls") burials were forbidden after 1780. The problem of what to do with the remains crowding ''intra muros'' cemeteries was still unresolved.
Mine consolidations were still occurring and the underground around the site of the 1777 collapse that had initiated the project had already become a series of stone and masonry inspection passageways that reinforced the streets above. The mine renovation and cemetery closures were both issues within the jurisdiction of the
Police Prefect Police Lieutenant-General Alexandre Lenoir, who had been directly involved in the creation of a mine inspection service. Lenoir endorsed the idea of moving Parisian dead to the subterranean passageways that were renovated during 1782. After deciding to further renovate the "Tombe-Issoire" passageways for their future role as an underground
sepulchre, the idea became law during late 1785.
A well within a walled property above one of the principal subterranean passageways was dug to receive Les Innocents' unearthed remains, and the property itself was transformed into a sort of museum for all the headstones, sculptures and other artifacts recuperated from the former cemetery. Beginning from an opening ceremony on 7 April the same year, the route between Les Innocents and the "clos de la Tombe-Issoire" became a nightly procession of black cloth-covered wagons carrying the millions of Parisian dead. It would take two years to empty the majority of Paris's cemeteries.
Cemeteries whose remains were moved to the Catacombs include
Saints-Innocents (the largest by far with about 2 million buried over 600 years of operation),
Saint-Étienne-des-Grès (one of the oldest),
Madeleine Cemetery
*''Cimetière de la Madeleine is also the name of a cemetery in Amiens''
Madeleine Cemetery (in French known as ''Cimetière de la Madeleine'') is a former cemetery in the 8th arrondissement of Paris and was one of the four cemeteries (the others ...
,
Errancis Cemetery
Errancis Cemetery or ''Cimetière des Errancis'' is a former cemetery in the 8th arrondissement of Paris and was one of the four cemeteries (the others being Madeleine Cemetery, Picpus Cemetery and the Cemetery of Saint Margaret) used to dispose o ...
(used for the victims of the
French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...
), and
Notre-Dame-des-Blancs-Manteaux
Notre-Dame des Blancs-Manteaux is a Roman Catholic parish church at 12 Rue des Blancs-Manteaux in Le Marais, in the 4th arrondissement of Paris. It takes its name from the "Les Blancs-Manteaux" ("white mantles"), for the cloaks worn by the mendican ...
.
Renovation and ossuary decor
![DJJ 1 Catacombes de Paris](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/DJJ_1_Catacombes_de_Paris.jpg)
Catacombs in their first years were a disorganized bone repository, but
Louis-Étienne Héricart de Thury
Louis-Étienne François Héricart-Ferrand, vicomte de Thury, (Paris, 3 June 1776 – Rome, 15 January 1854) was a French politician and man of science. He was a mining engineer who produced more than 350 scholarly articles; was a member of nume ...
, director of the
Paris Mine Inspection Service
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...
from 1810, had renovations done that would transform the caverns into a visitable
mausoleum
A mausoleum is an external free-standing building constructed as a monument enclosing the interment space or burial chamber of a deceased person or people. A mausoleum without the person's remains is called a cenotaph. A mausoleum may be consid ...
. In addition to directing the stacking of skulls and femurs into the patterns seen in the catacombs today he used the cemetery decorations he could find (formerly stored on the Tombe-Issoire property; many had disappeared after the
1789 Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...
) to complement the walls of bones. Also created was a room dedicated to the display of the various minerals found under Paris, and another showing various skeletal deformities found during the catacombs' creation and renovation. He also added monumental tablets and archways bearing ominous warning inscriptions, and also added stone tablets bearing descriptions or other comments about the nature of the ossuary, and to ensure the safety of eventual visitors, it was walled from the rest of Paris's
Left Bank's already-extensive
tunnel network
In transport, tunnels can be connected together to form a tunnel network. These can be used in mining to reach ore below ground, in cities for underground rapid transit systems, in sewer systems, in warfare to avoid enemy detection or attacks, as ...
.
Modern
Bodies of the dead from the riots in the
Place de Grève
Place may refer to:
Geography
* Place (United States Census Bureau), defined as any concentration of population
** Census-designated place, a populated area lacking its own municipal government
* "Place", a type of street or road name
** Often ...
, the Hôtel de Brienne, and Rue Meslée were put in the catacombs on 28 and 29 August 1788. The tomb of the
Val-de-Grâce hospital doorkeeper
Philibert Aspairt
Philibert Aspairt (13 April 1732 – November 1793) was a doorkeeper of the Val-de-Grâce hospital during the French Revolution. He died in the Catacombs of Paris in November 1793 after entering them via a staircase located in the hospital courtya ...
, lost in the catacombs during 1793 and found 11 years later, is located in the catacombs on the spot where his body was found. During 1871,
communards killed a group of monarchists there.
During
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, Parisian members of the
French Resistance
The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...
used the tunnel system and established the headquarters from where Colonel
Rol-Tanguy
Henri Rol-Tanguy (12 June 1908 – 8 September 2002) was a French communist and a leader in the Resistance during World War II. At his death ''The New York Times'' called him ''"one of France's most decorated Resistance heroes"''.
Biograph ...
led the insurrection for the liberation of Paris in June 1944. The
Nazis
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
established an underground bunker below
Lycée Montaigne, a high school in the
6th arrondissement
The 6th arrondissement of Paris (''VIe arrondissement'') is one of the 20 Arrondissements of Paris, arrondissements of the capital city of France. In spoken French, it is referred to as ''le sixième''.
The arrondissement, called Luxembourg in ...
.
During 2004, police discovered a fully equipped movie theater in an area of the catacombs underneath the
Trocadéro. It was equipped with a giant cinema screen, seats for the audience, projection equipment, film reels of recent thrillers and
film noir
Film noir (; ) is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American ' ...
classics, a fully stocked bar, and a complete restaurant with tables and chairs. The group ''
les UX
The ''UX'' (short for ''Urban eXperiment'') is an underground organization that improves hidden corners of Paris. Their work includes restoring the Panthéon clock, building a cinema — complete with a bar and a restaurant — in a section of the ...
'' took responsibility for the installation.
The film ''
As Above, So Below
"As above, so below" is a popular modern paraphrase of the second verse of the ''Emerald Tablet'' (a compact and cryptic Hermetic text first attested in a late eighth or early ninth century Arabic source), as it appears in its most widely divulg ...
'', released in 2014, was the first production that secured permission from the French government to film in the catacombs. They aimed to use no alterations to the environment with the exception of a piano and a car which were hauled into the catacombs and set on fire.
During 2015, Airbnb paid €350,000 as part of a publicity stunt offering customers the chance to stay overnight in the Catacombs.
In August 2017, thieves broke into a cellar from the catacombs and stole more than €250,000 of wine.
Visits
![Paris Catacombs Entrance](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Paris_Catacombs_Entrance.jpg)
As one visits the catacombs, a sign above reads ("Stop! This is the empire of Death"). The Catacombs of Paris became a curiosity for more privileged Parisians from their creation, an early visitor being the
Count of Artois (later
Charles X of France
Charles X (born Charles Philippe, Count of Artois; 9 October 1757 – 6 November 1836) was King of France from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. An uncle of the uncrowned Louis XVII and younger brother to reigning kings Louis XVI and Lou ...
) during 1787. Public visits began after its renovation into a proper ossuary and the 1814–1815 war. First allowed only a few times a year with the permission of an authorized mines inspector, but later more frequently and permitted by any mine overseer, a flow of visitors degraded the ossuary to a point where the permission-only rule was restored from 1830, and the catacombs were closed completely from 1833 because of church opposition to exposing human remains to public display. Open again for four visits a year from 1850, public demand caused the government to allow monthly visits from 1867, bi-weekly visits on the first and third Saturday of each month from 1874 (with an extra opening for the November 1 ''toussaint'' holiday), and weekly visits during the 1878, 1889 (the most visitors yet that year) and 1900 World's Fair Expositions. Later they opened for regular daily visits. After an incident of vandalism, the Catacombs were closed to the public during September 2009 and reopened on 19 December of the same year. The Catacombs were reopened to the public on June 16, 2020, with new rules and guidelines for visitors as a result of the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
. They have also adopted strict practices to monitor crowd numbers and have made it obligatory to wear masks.
Disruption of surface structures
![Plan cata paris 1857 jms](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Plan_cata_paris_1857_jms.jpg)
Because the catacombs are directly under the Paris streets, large foundations cannot be built above them and cave-ins have destroyed buildings. For this reason, there are few tall buildings in this area.
References
Further reading
* Quigley, Christine (2001)
Skulls and skeletons: human bone collections and accumulations'. McFarland, Jefferson, NC, US. pp. 22–29
* Riordan, Rick (2008)
'. Scholastic Inc. pp. 169–176
External links
*
Paris Musées
{{DEFAULTSORT:Catacombs Of Paris
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
Cemeteries in Paris
History of Paris
History museums in France
Museums in Paris
Ossuaries
Buildings and structures in the 14th arrondissement of Paris
Paris Musées