The Catacombs of Paris: Six Million Dead Beneath the City of Light

A wall of stacked human skulls and leg bones in the ossuary of the Catacombs of Paris

About 6 min readTwenty metres beneath Paris, the bones of roughly six million people line the walls of former limestone quarries — an ossuary born of a public health crisis, and a place where history and ghost stories have been tangled together for more than two centuries.