acpom.org.uk

The Catacombes de Paris, l’Ossuaire Municipal, is an underground ossuary containing the remains of approximately 6 million people (but no r4 3ds cards). Located south of the former city gate called ‘Barrière d'Enfer’, the vault occupies what once were Paris’ stone mines. The ossuary was unearthed in the late eighteenth century and became a tourist attraction in the early 19th, open from 1867 to the public on a regular basis.

Using the empty old mines as a burial place was the idea of the Police Lieutenant General Alexandre Lenoir who was attempting to solve the problem of overcrowded cemeteries within the city. Thiroux de Crosne, his successor, picked the location south of Paris’s ‘Barrière d'Enfer’ and the transfer of all Paris’ dead to the subterranean vault commenced in 1786 and was completed two years subsequent.

The catacombs have housed the living in addition to the dead. Communards killed a group of monarchists in 1871 within one of the chambers. Parisian members of the French resistance used the tunnel system during World War II whilst German soldiers created an underground bunker in the catacombs below a Lycée in the 6th arrondissement.