Paris Catacombs: The walk among the dead is reinvented from April 8th

Twenty meters below the paving stones, the construction site is nearing completion: two restorers are putting the finishing touches on two pillars painted in black and white, some explanatory signs, still covered with tarpaulins, are ready.

"To preserve this site, it was urgent to carry out improvements to the technical installations, ventilation, lighting, and electricity," Isabelle Knafou, administrator of the Paris Catacombs, explained to AFP, particularly to protect the human remains in an environment with a "humidity level close to 90%." As proof, drops of water regularly fall from the stone ceiling.

This late March morning, a rehearsal using an "immersive headset" is underway. The museum wants to "immerse the visitor in a somewhat strange sensory state that one experiences here in the bowels of Paris," emphasizes Isabelle Knafou, during a behind-the-scenes tour of the construction site.

At the entrance to the ossuary, the floor has been redone, and small, dim spotlights will highlight the base of the walls of bones. Elsewhere, the new lighting will evoke the Catacombs, which were visited by candlelight until 1974, explains Ms. Knafou.

"Equality" in the face of death

Until its closure for renovations in November 2025, the museum welcomed some 600.000 visitors a year - three-quarters of whom were foreign, particularly American - and its scenography has been redesigned to attract more residents of the capital.

"I really want Parisians to reclaim this story," the administrator continued.

The tour is divided into two parts: the discovery of the old quarries from which limestone was extracted to build the capital in particular, and the visit to the municipal ossuary, composed of the bones and skulls of millions of Parisians who died between the 10th and 18th centuries, transferred there from the 1780s onwards. The site has been open to the public since 1809.

"We know that there are all strata of the population, the poor as well as the rich, the anonymous as well as certain personalities who have made our history," explains Isabelle Knafou, citing actors of the French Revolution or even Molière.

The head of the museum-cemetery describes it as a place where one becomes aware of "the equality of all people in the face of death." Hence, she continues, the desire to preserve this "intimacy" with the deceased and not to protect the bones with barriers.

"You are asked not to touch anything and not to smoke in the ossuary," states a sign. This recommendation also applies to the galleries covered in graffiti, which are an integral part of the site's "identity," Ms. Knafou points out.

"The principle of a place like this, which is extremely fragile, is that you mustn't touch anything," she warns.

"Women's Project"

In front of a "hague" (low wall), Florent Bastaroli, a stonemason specializing in old buildings, dressed in blue work clothes, is dismantling and rebuilding a wall of bones. A line of stone has been added to the ground to combat dampness.

The craftsman and his colleagues must respect the spirit of the place, recreating, for example, a "cross made of skulls". His intervention in the Catacombs, independent of the ongoing work, has an "unusual" aspect: when he talks about it, "people are quite interested, others are a little frightened", the sixty-year-old points out.

The sounds of drills and the numerous electrical wires attest to work still in progress, as does the presence of these two large orange, electric wheelbarrows, "designed specifically for this construction site".

"The major challenge of the site was transporting and removing the rubble 20 meters underground," summarizes Camille Guérémy, manager of Artemis Architectes, the firm in charge of the project. The vast majority of the rubble is being kept on site.

This architect describes it as an "exciting project" with a "big challenge" to complete everything in five months, underground.

"In the construction industry, we are often the only women," Camille Guérémy also remarks, before listing the names of all the female chefs who participated in the renovation project, referring to it as a "women's project".