Paris' Most Eerie Tourist Attraction Is An Unusual Destination Worth Waiting In Line For

Paris has a reputation for being an incredibly romantic city, known for cafes and cheeses — but for around 550,000 visitors per year, a trip to France's capital means entering the Empire of the Dead. In between taking the best food tours in Paris and taking romantic evening walks by the Seine, you can descend into a labyrinth of tunnels beneath the cobblestone streets of the City of Light. Here, the walls are lined with the bones of about 6 million human bodies.

Every year, people explore these cool, damp, dimly lit tunnels for a chance to look into the dark eye sockets of the skulls arranged in artful patterns, arches, and columns in the many alcoves and ossuaries in the catacombs. In fact, it's so popular, that you might find yourself waiting in line to enter, even in the chilly offseason. There are about 200 miles of tunnels under the streets of Paris, but if you decide to experience the catacombs for yourself, you'll only explore about a mile of them in your hour-long journey into the L'Empire de la Mort.

An underground maze of tunnels packed with artistically arranged human skeletons might seem like something out of a horror movie, and in 2014 the horror movie, "As Above, So Below" which was filmed in the Paris Catacombs, depicted them as the secret gateway to Hell. Like many other things that Hollywood gets wrong about Paris, that is completely fictional — but it doesn't mean there isn't a fascinating story behind why the people of 18th century France decided to fill the tunnels under their city with towers of human bones.

In the 1700s, the population of Paris had grown to such untenable numbers that the mass graves that held the city's dead were overflowing, and periodically, were opened up and cleared out to make room for fresh bodies. Simultaneously, Paris had grown so quickly that the weight of it caused enormous sinkholes to open up all over the city, the ground suddenly consuming entire buildings and pulling them into the depths of old abandoned mines below. These disturbing times called for a disturbing solution — the empty mines would become the final resting place of the people of Paris.

While a few tourists reportedly experience the bizarre phenomenon Paris Syndrome when confronted by the reality that the heavily romanticized city can be overwhelming and potentially isolating, others come to France craving the unexpected and macabre. If you would like to embrace French existentialism and confront your own mortality while visiting Paris, you can check out the catacombs.

While many thrill-seekers and curious explorers have ventured into the forbidden parts of the catacombs, this can be extremely dangerous. In 2017, a pair of teenagers who were exploring the tunnels got lost and had to be hospitalized for hypothermia after spending three days lost in the dark tunnels. However, if you want to safely see this fascinating piece of history for yourself, a small portion of the catacombs are open for visitors every day of the week except Mondays, New Year's Day, May Day, and Christmas. You can purchase tickets up to a week in advance from Paris Musées Billetterie.