First thing I'd like to say about the Paris catacombs is that I would warn very tall people that you'll be stopping a lot down there...

Arrête! C'est ici, l'empire du mort

You'll come across this quotation after descending some 20 metres under the pavements of Paris. Here from Roman times were stone quarries, and in the 18th century these mines were filled with bones from overflowing Parisian cemetries such as Les Innocents. The overflowing graveyards which were no longer wanted in the city of Paris were destroyed and replaced by 3 grand new suburban graveyards, built to accommodate Paris's newly dead.

• The walls of bones are built in a dry-stone walling sort of way. There are the remains of an estimated 60,000,000 people in these tunnels, and it was in fact a tourist attraction from as early as the first half of the 19th century.
• Mushrooms (les champignons de Paris) were grown illegally in the dark tunnels until fairly recently - in the 1940s and 50s it's estimated that 40 to 50 kg of them were being produced. Potatoes and beer have also been stored in the tunnels.
• Robespierre's body was moved here by mistake, from the cemetery of Errancis. The bones of Madame de Pompadour and Rabelais are also thought to be here.

Visitors to the Catacombs

Graffiti can be found on the walls of the catacombs dating from as far back as the eighteenth century, with stonecutters' marks dating from the 1600s. There are illegal entrances all over Paris - from Metro tunnels, sewers, church crypts and even under the Montparnasse tower, and over the years there are have been many visitors.

Parties have long been thrown here - King Charles X in 1787 was one of the first to hold them, and in the early 19th Century a secret concert was held whose program consisted of (amongst other pieces) Frédéric Chopin's Funeral March and Camille Saint-Saën's Danse Macabre.

In more recent times both cataphiles with names such as Hamster Jovial and Le Baron Blanc (urban explorers), and cataflics (underground police giving out 60 euro fines) have journeyed the souterrain (and stll do). The more modern visitors have left behind copies of famous paintings on the tunnel walls - some extremely well done as you can see at Masterpieces of the Catacombs.

The Catacombs in Culture

• Good old Edgar Allen Poe who likes crypts, vaults and the like because you can bury people alive in them, mentions the catacombs in his 1846 short story "The Cask of Amontillado". Its walls had been lined with human remains piled to the vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris.
• Some Parisian vampires live there in Anne Rice's "Interview with the Vampire" - you'll remember Antonio Banderas in a vast underground cavern in the film - that's the Catacombs.
• Victor Hugo, in Les Misérables describes the catacombs as that dark cradle of primitive Christianity, in which the first mass was said.
• There's even a film starring Pink called "Catacombs" supposedly set in the Paris tunnels - it's not supposed to be very good..

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