In 1861, the photographer Félix Nadar historically immersed himself in the catacombs of Paris, the vast network of tunnels in which rest the remains of some six million people. Used as an ossuary since the end of the 18th century, it makes use of the nearly 190 miles of galleries below the capital resulting from limestone extraction. In so doing, it put an end to problems with the over-saturation of cemeteries (in addition to their foul odors, the city was still expanding), and Napoleonic France repurposed the morgue into a monumental work of funereal art, opening it to the public in 1809. Under the tutelage of the engineer Héricart de Thury, who decorated and designed its walls with rows of bones, symbols and plaques indicating their cemetery of origin, the catacombs are replete with literary inscriptions, presided over by the Dantesque “Stop! This is the Empire of the Dead” at its entrance in the city’s 14th arrondissement, the official start of its tours.
Nadar obtained this unusual permission in order to carry out an experiment with artificial light. The shocking results from his sessions were just compiled in a book from Spanish publisher La Felguera, Catacumbas. Exploradores y fotografía espectral en las catacumbas de París (Catacombs: Explorers and spectral photography of Paris), in which the photographer’s black-and-white images alternate with testimonies from renowned visitors of different eras, from Spanish dramatist José Echegaray to British writer Robert Macfarlane. “When Nadar came up with it, no one believed in the project. But he accomplished a real feat, because it was the first time that darkness was photographed,” the book’s publisher Servando Rocha tells EL PAÍS. “Imagine how much time this man spent down there, practically alone, in the most absolute silence and nearly unable to see.”
At the start of April, after five months of renovations, the catacombs reopened to tourists. Visitors only have access to a small part of the tunnels (under a mile) for security reasons: given their labyrinthine layout, it’s easy to get lost in unauthorized corners, as has happened to many explorers. Although they have always attracted interest, demand to access the catacombs has undergone an explosion in recent times. In 2014, annual visitors were estimated at 300,000, double the amount 10 years before. Now, they’ve reached a half million. “The goal isn’t to turn it into Disneyland,” Isabella Knafou, the catacomb administrator, recently expressed with concern to The New York Times, noting that it was, rather, “to emphasize solemnity and create an atmosphere of respect.”
The tunnels were a battleground for the 1871 Paris Commune and during World War II, used by the Resistance and Nazis alike. There is an entire subculture of cataphiliacs who know many of their prohibited areas down to the last inch. In its seemingly limitless lengths, police officers have discovered sects that meet among the dead, clandestine bars and, as wild as it may seem, movie theaters. There is a current focus on a fear of frivolous modern-day tourists, similar to the one that led British museums in 2023 to refer to “mummified people” rather than mummies, to remind visitors that they are standing before human remains. “It’s almost an art installation. France has been trying to exploit it since the beginning,” says Rocha, who also admits that the catacombs “have a feeling of show that in certain eras was understood, but in others is uncomfortable, because it seems to banalize death.”
As above, so below
Every graveyard serves as a memento mori, a reminder to visitors of the fate that awaits them. But their diverse forms also speak to another concern. “They tried to eliminate or move cemeteries that were within city limits,” says Rocha, who cites similar processes in other European countries. “But people didn’t want to be far from the churches, because they felt that it would be far from God, and they also didn’t want to be buried besides a murderer or a prostitute. That’s why they began to create sacramentals, private cemeteries.” In 2021, Rocha co-authored an investigation entitled Camposanto: Los cemeterios ocultos de Madrid y Barcelona (Holy ground: The hidden cemeteries of Madrid and Barcelona) with Javier Calvo in the magazine Agente Provocador, also published by La Felguera. “The process here was not to clean out the properties, but simply to tear down the tombs, spread lime and dirt on the ground and build. A third of Madrid is built on top of cemeteries, there’s a map where we clearly mark the places. You can go to any building, ring the bell and tell them. I haven’t, because I don’t want to ruin anyone’s dinner — ‘Hey, 160 feet down from here there are hundreds of cadavers.’”
In the case of Paris, the difference is that this enormous number of remains was carefully relocated to the great subterranean complex. “It’s an inverted city. It’s fascinating, because it’s like that maxim ‘as above, so below,’” adds the editor. Erin-Marie Legacey, a historian who specializes in modern France and is a professor at Trinity College in Dublin, offers a reminder that the catacombs must be situated in the context of the French Revolution. “If we think about the ideals of the Revolution — liberty, equality and fraternity — you can’t help but see how the catacombs are a crude and undeniable display of equality,” the academic tells EL PAÍS. The project channeled the ideas of the Enlightenment and secularization, essential parts of the 1789 intellectual breeding ground. Its catacombs embody the victory of reason and progress over superstition.
Even so, the Paris underground would wind up becoming a vast unconscious from which, in reality, visions of every kind may emerge. After all, Legacey points out, the catacombs are the resting place for victims like those killed in the prison massacres of 1792 (supposedly counterrevolutionaries, though the majority were actually everyday prisoners) and Robespierre. “The French Revolution declared a radical break with the past (literally restarting time, changing the names of streets and cities, etc.) The Bourbon Restoration, for its part, adopted a policy of union et oubli (forgetting the previous 20 years in the name of reconciliation and advancement). It’s easy to imagine the temporary confusion and cultural uncertainty that this generated. The catacombs offered an opportunity to descend into the past, surround oneself with the material proof of prior Parisian centuries, and contemplate their underlying connections.”
As to its attraction to tourists, the academic has a more direct take: “When they were opened to the public, they were clearly designed to provoke feelings in visitors: fear, wonder, entertainment, reverence, anxiety.” But nowadays, that could be changing. “Though the catacombs are without a doubt a space of necro-tourism (just look at the gift shop!), the intense aestheticization and objectification of human remains create an emotional distance between the visitor and the bones just in front of their nose.” Perhaps, the opposite of the Empire of the Dead is not Disneyland, but indifference.
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