Seeping with history and beauty, Paris – the city of lights, romance and Hemingway’s ‘Moveable Feast,’ is one of Europe’s most popular tourist destinations with something for everyone: the Eiffel Tower, Center Pompidou, Disneyland Paris, the Louvre Museum, Sacré-Coeur, the River Seine and much more… Paris is simply bursting with love, fashion, life, art, fun and entertainment.
Paris is home to a vast number of museums that appeal millions of visitors annually, but among them an unusual museum is outlined, which offers creepy yet unique experience you will not soon forget. Featured in several novels, including works by Victor Hugo, Edgar Allan Poe and Umberto Eco, the adventurous and thrilling Les Catacombes de Paris is something you should not miss out.
The Paris Catacombs are a huge maze of tunnels and crypts (around 3,000 km) dug under the city streets where Parisians placed the skeletons of their dead for almost 30 years. A dump, cramped tunnel takes you through a series of an average of 2.30-meters-high galleries before you reach the ossuary, the entrance where a sign engraved in the stone announces: “Arrête! C’est ici l’empire de la mort,” meaning, “Stop! This is the empire of death.”
The history of the Catacombs dates back to the mid-1780s, at a time when Paris’s largest cemeteries had become overcrowded. Between the end of the 18th century and Haussmann’s modernization of Paris, around six million skulls and bones were transported from Paris’s cemeteries and relocated on the old Montrogue quarries that first became the Catacombes in 1810. The Catacombs have been accessible to the public on a regular basis since 1867 and have caused curiosity from the first day of their creation. The unique bone collection covers an area of 11,000 sq. meters, which is only the tiny portion of the 300 km of old mine corridors. During World War II, the tunnels were used as a headquarters by the Resistance.
Things you should know about visiting the Catacombs:
- Children under 14 are not allowed to visit the Catacombs without an adult.
- There is a limit to the number of people that will stay in the Catacombs at a time and if you are a group of 10 to 20, you are permitted only from Tuesday-Friday in the mornings and by prior arrangement with the Musee Carnavalet (please call 01 44 59 58 31 for further details).
- The duration of the visit is 45 minutes to 1,5 hours, so be sure to allot enough time.
- The tours require two kilometers of walking, including hundreds of stairs up and down, so if you have any problem with walking, you should miss this out this adventure.
- As it’s underground and it can get chilly (usually around 11-14°C), you’d better bring a jacket or a light sweater even in summer.
- Finally, keep in mind that there are no bathrooms, no coat check or lockers underground, so take those things which you’ll have to carry throughout your visit.
The entrance is just across the street from the Denfert-Rochereau metro stop. The attraction is open from Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 5pm (last entry 4pm) and the admission fee is from €2.50 to €5. Guided visits are also available for €4.50 per person, on Tuesdays at 10:30am and Saturdays at 3pm.
