The Catacombs of Paris, the world's largest underground ossuary, covering 11,000 square meters, house the remains of millions of Parisians and offer a unique yet essential visit during your stay in the capital.

 

Paris rests on nearly 300 kilometers of tunnels, averaging 20 meters underground. Stone was extracted from these quarries for the construction of Parisian buildings, avoiding costly imports for centuries.

 

At the end of the 18th century, Parisian cemeteries began to overcrowd, and unsanitary conditions became a problem.

The Parisian authorities then chose an easily accessible site, located at that time outside the capital: the former quarries of La Tombe-Issoire, beneath the Montrouge plain, which were then disused.

The site's development and the organization of the transfer of remains were entrusted to Charles-Axel Guillaumot, an inspector with the General Inspectorate of Quarries of Paris, a service established by Louis XVI.

The most important cemetery in Paris, the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents, the final resting place of more than two million Parisians, was the first to be evacuated between late 1785 and 1787. The bones, transported at nightfall to avoid hostile reactions from the Parisian population and the Church, were dumped through two service shafts of the quarry, then distributed and piled up in the galleries by the quarry workers.

The cemetery site was subsequently redeveloped as a public market.

 

The site was officially designated the "Paris Municipal Ossuary" on April 7, 1786, and from that moment adopted the mythical term "Catacombs", in reference to the catacombs of Rome, which had been a source of public fascination since their discovery.

In 1787, the first visitor to the Catacombs of Paris was the Count of Artois, the future Charles X, who descended into them accompanied by ladies of the court.

The first public tours were not organized until 1806, and were limited to a select few.

 

The transfer of remains continued after the French Revolution until 1814, with the suppression of parish cemeteries in central Paris such as Saint-Eustache, Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs, and the Bernardine convent. They resumed in 1840 during Louis-Philippe's urban planning projects and during Haussmann's renovations from 1859 to 1860.

 

The last transfer of remains took place in 1933. Until 1972, visits to the Catacombs of Paris were conducted by candlelight; electricity was not installed until 1983.

 

The Catacombs of Paris house the remains of over 6 million Parisians, including several famous figures from French History, unfortunately undifferentiated and therefore impossible to identify.

Among them are: Charles-Axel Guillaumot, the first Inspector General of Quarries and in charge of consolidating and transferring bones; Nicolas Fouquet, Superintendent of Finances under Louis XIV; and the minister Colbert.

The remains of Rabelais, François Mansart, Jules Hardouin-Mansart, the Man in the Iron Mask, and Jean-Baptiste Lully were transferred from the Church of Saint-Paul.

The remains of Racine, Blaise Pascal, and Marat, as well as those of Saint-Sulpice and Montesquieu, were transferred from the Church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont.

The remains of the engravers Guillaume Chasteau and Laurent Cars, Charles and Claude Perrault, and Héricart de Thury, uncle of Louis-Étienne, the quarry inspector, were transferred from the Cemetery of Saint-Benoît.

The remains of the 1,000 Swiss Guards massacred at the Tuileries Palace in 1792, as well as those of the 1,343 people guillotined at the Carrousel or Place de la Concorde between 1792 and 1794, including Charlotte Corday, were transferred from the Ville-l'Évêque cemetery.

With the transfer of the bones from the Errancis cemetery during the Restoration, the remains of Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Lavoisier, and Robespierre were also moved to the Catacombs of Paris.

 

 

During your stay at the Hotel Le Jardin Le Bréa, descend into the Catacombs of Paris for a 1.5 km long tour at a depth of 20 m!

 

 

How to get to the Catacombs of Paris from the Hôtel Jardin Le Bréa?

Catacombs of Paris - 1 Avenue du Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy, 75014 Paris

- From the Hotel Jardin Le Bréa, take metro line 4 from Vavin station (1-minute walk), towards Bagneux-Lucie Aubrac, and get off at Denfert-Rochereau station.

You can also walk there from our hotel, by going down Boulevard Raspail to Place Denfert-Rochereau.

The total travel time from our hotel is 5 minutes by metro, or 15 minutes on foot.

 

 

Practical Information

https://www.catacombes.paris.fr/en