Description
This Paris Catacombs tour goes beneath the city with a local expert guide and a group of only six people, using skip-the-line entry and reaching restricted areas that regular visitors do not see. The visit lasts about ninety minutes.
It starts with a 133-step staircase down into a maze of tunnels that stretches for some 200 miles and holds the remains of roughly six million Parisians. Along the way the guide explains how the galleries began as limestone quarries in the 13th century, supplying stone for buildings as grand as Notre-Dame, and why bad weather in the 1780s led the city to move its dead here.
- The bone decorations, from religious symbols to hearts
- The Crypt of the Passion and its so-called Barrel, built from skeletal remains
- The tomb of the doorman Philibert Aspairt, who died here in the 18th century
The guide also covers the Catacombs in wartime, when the German Wehrmacht and the French Resistance each used a part of them as bunkers, their link to the French Revolution, and the cataphiles who explore the tunnels today. Watch the walls for graffiti they have left. Hotel pickup, food, drink and tips are not included.