Why were the Paris Catacombs created?

The catacombs came from two eighteenth-century problems that happened to fit together: cemeteries in central Paris were overfull and thought to endanger health, and old limestone quarries beneath the city were collapsing. Moving the bones into the empty quarries addressed both. The name borrows from the Roman catacombs, but the Paris site was a secular solution, not a copy of early Christian burial practice. [1] [2]

Most Parisians were buried in communal graves at their parish church. The largest burial ground was the Holy Innocents' Cemetery beside the Les Halles market, used continuously for centuries. According to history.com, by the mid-1700s about one tenth of the city's dead were buried there each year. Historian Rosemary Wakeman describes decomposition mixing with market waste into a stench that made the area a source of infection and disease, as quoted by [history.com](https://www.history.com/articles/paris-catacombs-origins) and [daily.jstor.org](https://daily.jstor.org/how-the-paris-catacombs-solved-a-cemetery-crisis/). [1] [3]

Doctors and officials of the time believed that miasmas, or bad air, spread disease. The Parlement of Paris restricted burials in churches and city cemeteries in 1765, and a royal declaration later ordered cemeteries in built-up areas to be moved. In spring 1780, residents beside the Innocents complained of illness, and gases from decomposing bodies were found to have burst into cellars. JSTOR Daily also relays an account of a mass grave wall bursting into a neighbor's basement. The cemetery was closed in 1780. [3] [1]

Paris stone had been quarried since Roman times, and by the late eighteenth century the city had grown over the old workings. A major collapse on the Rue de l'Enfer in 1774 swallowed buildings and, by history.com's account, people. Louis XVI created the Inspection Générale des Carrières on April 4, 1777, to map and consolidate the quarries. Its inspector, Charles-Axel Guillaumot, needed to stabilize the empty galleries and was also put in charge of preparing the site for the bones. [1] [2] [3]

The chosen site was the former Tombe-Issoire quarries, then outside the city. Bones from the Saints-Innocents were moved between 1785 and 1787, carried at night to avoid hostile reactions from the public and the Church. The site was consecrated as the Paris Municipal Ossuary on April 7, 1786, and acquired the name Catacombs. Transfers from other cemeteries continued until 1814 and resumed in 1840, including during the Haussmann-era rebuilding of the city. Wikipedia says the ossuary holds the remains of more than six million people. [2] [3] [4]

Sources differ slightly on details such as the start of the transfers, with some giving December 1785 and others 1788 for the nightly processions, so exact dates vary by account. [1] [4]