This photograph taken in Paris on August 12, 2025 shows tourists examining human skulls and bones aligned against a wall of Paris' Catacombs. DIMITAR DILKOFF / AFP
One of Paris's top tourist attractions – and certainly its most morbid – closes to visitors from Monday, November 3 for six months of renovations. The Paris Catacombs, underground galleries that are the final resting place for millions of bodies disinterred from the capital's cemeteries between the Middle Ages and the French Revolution, are to become modernized, with better ventilation, lighting and an improved layout.
The works, costing €5.5 million, are designed to improve the experience for the 600,000 annual visitors to the ossuary museum – and to help preserve the remains held there.
The moisture build-up in the catacombs, which drips into puddles on the ground and on visitors "is bad for the preservation of bones," the site's administrator, Isabelle Knafou said, as she gave AFP a last look before the temporary closure. That humidity allows the bacteria to settle and grow on the piled-up skeletal remains.
Renovations will aim to reduce that problem, while also restructuring the near 800-meter path visitors follow during visits, all the while aiming to keep the "authentic" spirit of the place, Knafou said.
