History of Paris Catacombs

The history of Paris catacombs is related to the history of the old and extinct Parisian cemeteries and to the burial of the Reign of Terror’s beheaded victims in 1794, during the French Revolution. The first and oldest necropolis in Paris was the Saints Innocents cemetery, which dated back to the 9th century AD, with its terrains belonging to the Church of Saint Germain. Over the years, this early graveyard would receive the corpses of Christians from the different parishes of Paris.

In the 14th and 15th century, the land dedicated to the interment of deceased human beings would have to be expanded several times due to two historical events: The Black Death, or Plague, and the Hundred Years War, which caused famine in France. By the late 18th century, armed conflicts and diseases had saturated and overfilled the Saint Innocent cemetery with human remains, this is why it was definitely closed in 1780, during the reign of Louis XVI as it had been decided to use the abandoned underground quarries in Paris as a storage area for all the skulls and bones of the corpses that were exhumed. Thus, these unused quarries became known as the catacombs, because it was associated to the ancient catacombs in Rome, where the first Christians were buried.

The head of Louis XVI and its corpse, along with the bodies of hundreds of victims that were beheaded in the Reign of Terror were buried in a private cemetery located in the 12th arrondissement: the Picpus cemetery. Most of the bodies were noblemen, writers, lawyers, etc, accused of conspiring against the Revolutionary government and the First Republic. Since it is still active, the bodies of 1306 beheaded victims remain buried there. However, the guillotined bodies of those who ruled France during the Reign of Terror, such as Georges-Jacques Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Maximilien Robespierre, and Louis de Saint-Just, were buried in a defunct necropolis: the Errancis cemetery. These two necropolis, along with the Madeleine graveyard, were the official cemeteries of the French Revolution.

In 1797, the Errancis cemetery was closed, and, from 1826 to 1879, all the human remains were exhumed and relocated down below, in the Parisian catacombs, where there is a plaque that marks their final resting place. To replace the Saints Innocents cemetery, which had been closed in 1780, Napoleon had ordered the aperture of what would be the biggest necropolis in Paris: the Pere Lachaise cemetery in 1804. Twenty years later, in 1824, under Charles X, another large necropolis would be inaugurated: Montparnasse cemetery.