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Catacombes de Paris | |
 Crypt of the Sepulchral Lamp in the Catacombs of Paris | |
  Location within Paris | |
| Established | 1810 |
|---|---|
| Location | Place Denfert-Rochereau, 75014 Paris, France |
| Coordinates | 48°50′02″N2°19′56″E / 48.83389°N 2.33222°E /48.83389; 2.33222 |
| Type | Historic site |
| Collections | Paris's former stone quarries, ossuary contents of Paris's pre-18th-centuryintra muros cemeteries |
| Visitors | 480,000 (2018)[1] |
| Public transit access | Denfert-Rochereau     |
| Website | www |
TheCatacombs of Paris (French:Catacombes de Paris,pronunciationⓘ) are undergroundossuaries inParis,France, which hold the remains of more than six million people.[2] Built to consolidate Paris's ancientstone quarries, they extend south from theBarrière d'Enfer ("Gate of Hell") former city gate. The ossuary was created as part of the effort to eliminate the effects of the city's overflowing cemeteries. Preparation work began shortly after a 1774 series of basement wall collapses around theHoly Innocents' Cemetery added a sense of urgency to the cemetery-eliminating measure, and from 1788, nightly processions of covered wagons transferred remains from most of Paris's cemeteries to a mine shaft opened near theRue de la Tombe-Issoire [fr].[3]
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 aroundPlace Denfert-Rochereau, it was opened to public visitation from 1874. Since 2013, the Catacombs have numbered among the fourteen City of Paris Museums managed byParis Musées. Although the ossuary comprises only a small section of the underground mines of Paris, Parisians often refer to the entire tunnel network as the catacombs.
Paris's earliest burial grounds were to the southern outskirts of the Roman-era Left Bank city. In ruins after theWestern Roman Empire's 5th-century end and the ensuingFrankish 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 presentHôtel 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.[4]
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-centuryNorman 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 presentrue Saint-Denis,rue de la Ferronnerie,rue de la Lingerie and therue Berger, had become the city's principal cemetery.By the end of the same century, Saints Innocents was neighbour to the principal Parisian marketplaceLes Halles, 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 (6.6-foot) mound of earth filled with centuries of Parisian dead, plus the remains from theHôtel-Dieu hospital and the Morgue; other Parisian parishes had their own burial grounds, but the conditions in Saints Innocents were the worst.[5]
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.[6]
Much of the Left Bank area rests upon richLutetian limestone 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.[7]
The undermined state of the Left Bank was known to architects as early 17th-century construction of theVal-de-Grâce 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 theboulevard Saint-Michel) caused KingLouis XVI to name a commission to investigate the state of the Parisian underground. This resulted in the creation of theinspection Générale des Carrières (Inspection of Mines) service.[citation needed]
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 allintra muros (Latin: "within the [city] walls"[8]) burials were forbidden after 1780. The problem of what to do with the remains crowdingintra muros cemeteries was still unresolved.[citation needed]
Mine consolidations were still occurring and the underground around the site of the 1777 collapse[9] 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 thePolice 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.[citation needed] After deciding to further renovate the "Tombe-Issoire" passageways for their future role as an undergroundsepulchre, the idea became law in late 1785.[citation needed]
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 recovered 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.[10]
Cemeteries whose remains were moved to the Catacombs includeSaints-Innocents (the largest by far with about 2 million buried over 600 years of operation),Saint-Étienne-des-Grès[11][better source needed] (one of the oldest),Madeleine Cemetery,Errancis Cemetery (used for the victims of theFrench Revolution), andNotre-Dame-des-Blancs-Manteaux.[12] By this way the skeletal remains of several notable victims of the French Revolution were transferred to the Catacombs, including (the date is the date of death):[13]
Catacombs in their first years were a disorganized bone repository, butLouis-Étienne Héricart de Thury, director of theParis Mine Inspection Service from 1810, had renovations done that would transform the caverns into a visitablemausoleum. In addition to directing the stacking of skulls, femurs and tibias 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 the1789 Revolution) 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 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'sLeft Bank's already-extensivetunnel network.[14]
DuringWorld War II, Parisian members of theFrench Resistance used the tunnel system and established the headquarters from where ColonelRol-Tanguy led the insurrection for theliberation of Paris in June 1944. TheWehrmacht established an underground bunker belowLycée Montaigne, a high school in the6th arrondissement.[15][16]
During 2004, police discovered a fully equipped movie theater in an area of the catacombs underneath theTrocadéro. It was equipped with a giant cinema screen, seats for the audience, projection equipment, film reels of recent thrillers andfilm noir classics, a fully stocked bar, and a complete restaurant with tables and chairs. The grouples UX took responsibility for the installation.[17]
The filmAs Above, So Below, 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.[18]
During 2015, Airbnb paid €350,000 as part of a publicity stunt offering customers the chance to stay overnight in the Catacombs.[19]
In August 2017, thieves broke into a cellar from the catacombs and stole more than €250,000 of wine.[20]
Only one death has officially been confirmed in the Catacombs. In 1793,Philibert Aspairt, a door keeper for theVal-de-Grâce hospital, died in the catacombs. It is thought that he had lost his light source, and was left to die in the darkness. In 1804, 11 years later, his body was found, only a few metres away from a staircase that would have led to an exit. He was only identified by his hospital key ring, and the buttons on his jacket.[21]
As one visits the catacombs, a sign above readsArrête! C'est ici l'empire de la Morte ("Stop! The empire of Death lies here").[22] The Catacombs of Paris became a curiosity for more privileged Parisians from their creation, an early visitor being theCount of Artois (laterCharles X of France) in 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 1toussaint 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.[23] The Catacombs were reopened to the public on June 16, 2020, with new rules and guidelines for visitors as a result of theCOVID-19 pandemic.[24] Visitors are no longer required to wear masks.[when?][25]
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.[26]
