that’s gruesome, ghoulish and downright spooky , but it never fails to captivate visitors. In 1785, the subterranean tunnels of an abandoned quarry were upcycled as storage rooms for the exhumed bones of corpses that could no longer fit in the city's overcrowded cemeteries—now it's one

History

As the cemeteries became a public health concern, officials decided to move their contents to a site that was, at that time, outside the capital. The first evacuations happened from 1785 to 1787, from the Saints-Innocents cemetery, a site that had been in use since the Middle Ages and closed in 1780. At first, the human remains were simply piled into the quarry. However, before opening to the public in 1809, there was a decorative restoration of the ossuary. By 1810 the skull- and bone-lined catacombs—resting place of millions of anonymous Parisians—had been officially born. 

Les Catacombes refers to the part of underground quarry that became the publicly accessible ossuary. However, the term catacombs is often used colloquially to refer to the more vast underground network of tunnels under Paris. These underground tunnels have remained a storied part of Parisian history: during WWII the Resistance held meetings there. Today, at night, thrill-seeking cataphiles roam the tunnels illegally.