from the housing of the dead

Beneath the streets of Paris is a labyrinthine network of tunnels housing the remains of approximately six million people. The Paris Catacombs represent far more than a tourist attraction practical necessity, cultural memory and evolving relationships with death and urban space. The catacombs originated from an 18th-century public health crisis. Paris’ cemeteries had become dangerously overcrowded, centuries of burials had raised the cemetery ground level several meters above neighbouring streets and the decomposing contents began contaminating nearby wells and basements.

Following several incidents, including a basement wall collapse that sent rotting corpses tumbling into a neighboring property, authorities decided to relocate the dead to the city’s vast underground networks of abandoned limestone quarries. The operation began in 1786 and continued nightly for two years, when black-draped wagons moved bones to their new resting place.

What began as pragmatic urban planning evolved into something more profound. Louis-Étienne Héricart de Thury, who oversaw the catacombs in the early 19th century, transformed the utilitarian bone repository into a contemplative space. He arranged skulls and femurs in decorative patterns, created memorial tablets with poetic inscriptions, and established a visitor entrance. This deliberate aesthetic organization reflected Enlightenment-era sensibilities about rational order while maintaining reverence for human remains. The catacombs quickly acquired cultural significance.

During the French Revolution, they represented both the physical remains of the old regime and a democratic leveling, with aristocrats and commoners alike intermingled in anonymous ossuary arrangements. During World War II, Resistance fighters used the tunnels for clandestine meetings and to establish hidden headquarters, while German forces built bunkers in other sections. This period enhanced the underground network’s mythological status.

Today, only a small portion is officially open to visitors as the Denfert-Rochereau Ossuary. The remaining passages, though officially off-limits, have developed their own subculture. Cataphiles—urban explorers who illegally navigate the restricted tunnels—have created underground art galleries, concerts and meeting spaces.

Anne Griffiths in Paris