Why Are 6 Million People Buried in the Paris Catacombs?

Twenty metres beneath the streets of Paris, there is a corridor whose walls are made of people: the remains of an estimated six million Parisians, more than twice the number who live in the city above today. Nobody chose to be buried there. Most of them were buried somewhere else first. So why are six million people lying under the Paris Catacombs? The limestone quarries that built Paris and left the ground hollow, the street that fell in in 1774, the overflowing Cemetery of the Holy Innocents, the night-time transfers of the bones from 1786, the ossuary that became a monument, Nadar's first underground photographs, and the legends of the tunnels checked against the record. CHAPTERS 0:00 The empire of death 0:39 A city built from its own underground 1:28 The day the street fell in 2:24 The cemeteries were full 3:27 The bones go underground 4:32 From dump to monument 5:21 Visitors 5:58 The other catacombs 7:20 The legends 7:49 The answer WHAT IS NOT CERTAIN The figure of six million is an estimate. The 1780 cellar collapse at Les Innocents rests on accounts of the time. Much of the story of Philibert Aspairt beyond his tomb and dates is told, not recorded. The hidden cinema of 2004 is known from press reports. The lost-camera video has never been traced to a real case. SOURCES • Paris Musées: Catacombes de Paris (history of the ossuary) • Inspection générale des carrières, Ville de Paris • Encyclopaedia Britannica: Catacombs of Paris • Musée de la Libération de Paris – musée du Général Leclerc – musée Jean Moulin (Rol-Tanguy command post) • Gilles Thomas, Les Catacombes: histoire du Paris souterrain, 2015 ABOUT THE VISUALS Human remains are shown as visitors of the public museum see them. Nadar's 1861 photographs and the engravings are in the public domain. The sections and diagrams are our own and schematic. No AI-generated images are used. Narration, music and sound effects were created with ElevenLabs. IMAGES (Wikimedia Commons, commons.wikimedia.org) • Rijin (CC BY-SA 4.0) • Deror avi (CC BY-SA 3.0) • Matthias Süßen (CC BY-SA 4.0) · 3 photos • iMahesh (CC BY-SA 4.0) • Jorge Láscar (CC BY 2.0) · 4 photos • Mini.fb (CC BY-SA 4.0) • Polymagou (CC BY-SA 4.0) • Edmond8674 (CC BY-SA 4.0) • Poissons1957 (CC BY-SA 4.0) • Jérôme Bon (CC BY 2.0) • Shadowgate (CC BY 2.0) • AlexP at nl.wikipedia (CC BY-SA 2.5 nl) Public domain and CC0: Nadar, Paris Musées (Musée Carnavalet), period engravings and others. Stock footage: Pexels. Brave Curious Minds — Explore. Question. Understand. #ParisCatacombs #Paris #History #Catacombs #AncientMysteries