Paris is internationally famous for one thing in the UrbEx world – “The Catacombs” (rightly or wrongly so… I’m not sure) and this report is going to cover one small part of the network – La Carrière Des Capucins.
Firstly, if you know the Paris catacombs, the next 4 paragraphs will not be anything new and I advise you to skip to the next section. If you want to know something about the catacombs and why they exist, read on.
For centuries the massive sandstone shelf on which Paris is situated has been mined for building materials and as far back as 1000 years the stone was mined from underground quarries (carrières) outside Paris. As the quarries were exhausted and Paris continued to expand, the old quarries were build over and forgotten about. This resulted in a significant problems for the growing city – the ancient mines started collapsing, taking building, roads, cars and pedestrians with them.
To prevent this, the IDC, Inspection générale des Carrières (General Inspection of the Quarries) was established in 1777* with the task of locating all the ancient quarries and making them stable. Over the next 120 years approximately 200km of tunnels were excavated under the nations capital that roughly following the layout of the streets above.
These underground tunnels are officially called “les Carrières de Paris” (the quarries of Paris), but Parisians today popularly refer to the entire network as “the catacombs” due to the human remains now stored in certain sections of the network.
In the late eighteenth century, Parisian cemeteries were saturated to a point where people were suffering from disease due to the improperly buried and decomposing human corpses. The solution; to store the bones in the old quarry network was proposed in 1786 – and the first remains were relocated in August, 1788. Today the network contains the remains of around 7 million people. So that is a really short history of the catacombs, if you want to know more, hit up you favorite search engine.
As mentioned earlier, the network is large, around 200km. A small section is open for public tours (~2km) but the majority of the network is not officially accessible. It has been illegal to enter the quarries since the 1950’s, apparently due to terrorism fears. But besides this and the risk of a 60 Euro fine from the ‘catacops’ it is very regularly visited by explorers, catafiles and anyone else who manages to find an entry.
‘Exploring’ the main network has very little to do with ‘exploring’ in the true sense of the word, there are so many visitors every day (even in the restricted sections) that very little is sacred. For most who continue to visit the catacombs, it is a social network.
I have chosen to include La Carrière des Capucins on this site as a representative of the vast network because it retains its historical and artistic value which is unfortunately tainted by many years of disregard in the main network (GRS – 14th arrondisment catas).
La Carrière des Capucins is not open to the public or accessible from the main network. It is currently administered by the Parisian historical society. I was lucky to have been invited to see and photograph this amazing section of the Paris catacombs.
The photos above are of the Capucins font. There are 3 fonts in the Paris catacombs (two of which are unofficially accessible in the main network), this is the best preserved by a long way.
There is a scale marker on the wall, the highest point is 7m and at the time the photo was taken the water was at about 4m deep.
The Capucin quarries are also among the oldest sections of galleries built by the Inspection générale Des Carrières. It is incredibly well preserved and contains beautiful sculptures, murals and stonework. Most of the artwork was created by artists who were invited by the historical society.
The Capucin quarries have been separated from the main network since before the second world war when it was used as a bomb shelter for the Capucin hospital which sits directly over this section of the network.
Most of Paris is held up by pillars like this.
If it was not for these signs indicating which street was above I probably would have got lost and died of starvation long ago.
This plaque indicates the column was built in the year Captain Cook landed in Australia, 1777. This is not like exploring drains back home 
I believe the rest of the inscription indicates this is the 29th column build by the inspector des carriers in that year.
That’s it for now, but stay tuned, the Paris underground is a big place.
But if you want to see pics from the 13th, 14th (GRS) and 16th catas, there are a few scattered throughout the gallery.
*Dates and figures from Wikipedia.
