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Paris’ secret catacombs

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Paris may be the most visited city in the world but there are parts of it few have ever seen – underground. “The Catacombs” began as vast underground limestone quarries. Today they are the playground of the bold and the brave. Don Duncan brings us below the surface of the City of Light.

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MARCO WERMAN: Paris is the most visited city in the world. But relatively few tourists visit one of the most fascinating parts of the French capital. That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going underground to tour The Catacombs. They began in the Gallo-Roman period as vast underground limestone quarries. They were then transformed, beginning in the 1700s, into miles of walled passageways. Today, they are the playground of the bold and the brave. Don Duncan brings us into the dark below the surface of the City of Light.

DON DUNCAN:  It’s early on a Saturday night and while much of Paris is preparing to go out on the town, some are ready to go under it. A group climbs down onto abandoned train tracks and from there into an underground tunnel. There they join others, congregated around a kind of rabbit hole entrance to the Catacombs of Paris, a network of some 150 miles of tunnels, 65 feet beneath the surface. High boots and a good flashlight are essential. At some points you’re up to your knees in water. Other times you have to crouch or even crawl through tunnels. For the most part, the catacombs are a kind of grid that mirrors the streets above and even carry corresponding street signs. But at the same time, it’s a completely different world from the surface.

BACCHUS:  We are in the guts of Paris and the authenticity of the town.

DUNCAN: And that’s what’s brought 40-year-old Bacchus down here again and again for the past 23 years. The Catacombs are steeped in untouched history. They were crucial to the French Resistance, for example, in the last days before the Liberation of Paris from the Nazis. They have also served as a kind of skeleton storage space. I found myself sitting on thousands of human bones during a break we took. They were transported down here from the city’s over-flowing cemeteries in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. There is a small section of the Catacombs open to the public where you can get guided tours, during daylight hours, along short lengths of well-lit passages. But Bacchus and his subterranean friends don’t go there. They plumb the depths of the vast majority of the network that is out of bounds and illegal.

BACCHUS: We are in the historic part of Paris. It’s forbidden to visit and we have a chance to know it.

DUNCAN: Because of the illegality of their visits, Bacchus and others have asked to be identified by their subterranean pseudonyms. Over the years, the Catacombs have developed their own subculture, says 46-year-old Riff, another long time tunneler who also goes by a pseudonym.

FRENCH SPEAKING

RIFF: It’s an atmosphere that lends itself to cultural activity. For me, it’s photography. It’s a virgin space in a picturesque place and in the Catacombs the temperature is always the same. It’s the temperature of a cellar, winter or summer.

DUNCAN: In one chamber, there’s a mini-castle complete with turrets and moat that a couple made out of limestone bricks. Others cover the walls with murals. And then there’s the “bookstore,” a spot where people lend and borrow novels to read while hanging out around the many caves and hang-out spots. People like Riff and Bacchus have been coming here for years. Back when they started, maps and crucial cartographical information were traded like gold, and status within the Catacombs community was won through frequency of visits and loyalty to the tunnels. But since the arrival of the Internet, there has been a spike in newcomers.  Fourteen year old Vincent Delate recently downloaded maps from one of the many websites about the Catacombs, and ventured out.

FRENCH SPEAKING

VINCENT DELATE:  It’s been a month. I know it already by heart. It’s not hard to find your way around here.

DUNCAN: Some of the older tunnelers welcome the new blood and interest. Others think it is compromising what was once a tight-knit community. But for the Companie Specialisee d’Intervention, or CSI, the Paris police unit of 140 personnel dedicated to patrolling and curbing the subterranean activity, it’s a bad development. Commandant Brigadier Sylvie Gautron of the CSI says that the number of times the unit has had to rescue lost adventurers is exploding. But she says the answer isn’t to try and make the Catacombs inaccessible.

FRENCH SPEAKING

SYLVIE GAUTRON: I’m not saying we should leave them easy access to the Catacombs but if the entrance points they most commonly use were blocked up, they’d be tempted to open up manholes in the street and this would be even more dangerous.

DUNCAN: For now, the Catacombs are easy enough to access for those who dare. Some go for the silence, others for the thrill of being in a secret society of sorts. But one reason seems to unite them all. The Catacombs are a constant, unchanging place in a world that, up on the surface, is always in flux. For The World, this is Don Duncan in Paris.

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