10 Creepiest Catacombs You Can Actually Visit
GettyBiggest population: Catacombes de Paris
Paris, France
Population: 6 million
Since the founding of the city, Parisians had been burying their dead in the middle of town, which led to an untenable situation: In the spring of 1780, heavy rains wrecked a burial mound at the overcrowded Les Innocents cemetery, sending a wave of decaying corpses tumbling into the building next door. The king’s solution to necrotic overpopulation? Shut down all of Paris’s graveyards and transfer all the bodies to an extensive network of underground tunnels left behind by 13th-century limestone miners—a task that took 12 years to complete. Today, morbid-minded tourists can explore about a mile of this underground labyrinth’s 200 miles of bone-lined walls, greeted by this friendly inscription: "Arrête! C'est ici l'empire de la mort" (Stop! This is the empire of death).
Gary Cook / AlamyBest bone design: Monastery of San Francisco Catacombs
Lima, Peru
Population: 25,000 to 75,000
Lima’s early cemeteries were constructed underground; this cavernous ossuary, built beneath an 18th-century colonial monastery, was the city’s first and largest. Most of Lima’s dead found their way down here for centuries, until the early 19th century, when someone had the genius idea to build a graveyard outside of town. When overcrowding became an issue, sextons dissolved corpses in quicklime, leaving only the skeletons behind. There are also secret passageways down here that may have been used during the Inquisition.
Famous resident: Juan Gomez, a 16th-century doctor and friar who, according to legend, possessed miraculous faith-healing powers.
EmmePi Travel / AlamyCreepiest: Capuchin Monastery Catacombs
Palermo, Italy
Population: 8,000
Human beings generally don’t like to be reminded of what postmortem decay looks like—with the possible exception of the Capuchin monks. In the catacombs beneath this monastery on the outskirts of Palermo, deceased members of their order have been quasi-mummified and propped up in gruesome poses since 1599. Eventually, the larger public got in on the game. For more than 300 years, the hoi polloi found their final resting place in these catacombs—and by rest, we mean hang on the wall, sit around tables, and chill out in glass coffins, all in their finest regalia.
Famous resident: Rosalia Lombardo, who died at the age of two in 1920, nicknamed “Sleeping Beauty.” To this day, she’s eerily well-preserved in a glass coffin.
Kim Haughton / AlamyFriendliest mummies: St. Michan’s Church
Dublin, Ireland
Population: A few dozen
Central Dublin isn’t the first place you’d think to go looking for mummies, but an accident of nature has created some nonetheless. In the crypts beneath St. Michan’s, a 17th-century church, dry, cool air and limestone walls have led to the mummification of many of its bodies. Among the preserved are four mystery corpses whose coffins have fallen away, nicknamed "the thief," "the nun," "the unknown," and "the crusader," whose fingers visitors can touch for good luck. Others interred here include a few centuries of earls and executed Irish rebels. Dracula scribe Bram Stoker paid a visit here once, and Handel composed his Messiah on the organ upstairs.
Famous resident: William Rowan Hamilton (1805–1865), an Anglo-Irish mathematician who spruced up Newton’s laws.
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JOHN KELLERMAN / AlamyRoyalest intestines: Stephansdom Crypt
Vienna, Austria
Population: 11,000
If you were a member of the royal Hapsburg line, Austria’s first family for many a century, the afterlife was an elaborate affair. While your body was laid to rest in the Imperial Crypt, your heart wound up in an urn at the Augustinian Church, and your viscera were sealed in jars beneath Stephansdom, central Vienna’s towering Gothic cathedral. More than 70 of these macabre repositories are in the Ducal Crypt of Stephansdom’s catacombs, not too far from the bones of the rabble. The cathedral offers guided tours past the ossified walls and guts-filled jars.
Melvyn Longhurst / AlamyCultural melting pot: Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa
Alexandria, Egypt
Population:Unknown
This subterranean marvel (which also has an above-ground component, pictured here), whose name means "mound of shards," was forgotten for a millennia and change. In 1900, it was "discovered" by a donkey that fell into a hole while carting rocks through Alexandria. Dating from the second century C.E., the design of these catacombs reflects the cultural diversity of the old city above it. Here, traditional Egyptian sarcophagi rub elbows with Greek and Roman-style statuary. Kom el Shoqafa was most likely built for one family, but later expanded to include more deceased guests. There's even a banquet hall inside, built for relatives of the dead to throw annual we-miss-ya parties.
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PRISMA ARCHIVO / AlamyMost Catholic: Roman catacombs and crypts
Rome, Italy
Population: Unknown
Rome’s long, bloody history means that the city’s underground is riddled with catacombs. There are at least 40 in and around the metropolis, most of them Catholic and near the burial site of some martyr or other. You can tour many of them, but among the most prominent are the extensive Domitilla, home to 80 painted tombs, an underground basilica, and a second-century fresco of the Last Supper; St. Callixtus, the former resting place of ten martyrs and 16 popes; and St. Sebastian, built on the titular martyr’s burying place, where you can see one of the arrows that supposedly pierced him.
Famous resident: He’s not there in person, but marble footprints said to belong to Jesus are on display at St. Sebastian.
Raul Touzon/National Geographic Society/CorbisMost labyrinthine: Odessa Catacombs
Odessa, Ukraine
Population: Unknown
There’s a shadow world beneath the streets of Odessa—an uncharted maze of tunnels that twist and turn for more than 1,500 miles. It’s the longest underground passage in the world, initially dug out in the 17th century and then drastically expanded in the 19th century to quarry limestone used to build much of the city. Though the Odessa tunnels were never used as graves, mummified remains from various eras are discovered every few years, a macabre reminder of what can happen if you get lost down here. In modern times, an entire culture has sprung up around catacomb exploration; the intrepid can find unofficial guides to take you into the labyrinth. There’s also a small portion officially open to the public at the Museum of Partisan Glory, north of town.
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Arcaid Images / AlamyMost ancient: Hal Saflieni Hypogeum
Paola, Malta
Population: 7,000
When a stonemason unwittingly uncovered the Hypogeum in 1902, he had no idea he’d stumbled upon an archeological gold mine. This three-story underground complex dates back as far as 4,000 B.C.E., when the Bronze Age was just a twinkle in Europe’s eye. Made by mysterious prehistoric Maltese people, the catacombs were probably first used as a sanctuary, then later converted into a depository for the dead. The chambers are early architectural marvels, with names like the Snake Pit and the Holy of Holies.
Tomas Hajek/Demotix/CorbisMost recent discovery: Brno Ossuary
Brno, Czech Republic
Population: 50,000
The walls are literally made of bones in these tunnels, situated beneath the millennia-old town of Brno. While doing a pre-construction dig in 2001, archeologists discovered thousands of skeletal remains in the area beneath the Church of St. Jacob. Back in the 17th and 18th centuries, the bones were arranged in orderly stacks; but years of mud, water, and neglect had knocked them into messy piles. What's a town to do? Clean and reorganize all the remains, of course, then open the resulting charnel house to the public. Skulls, femurs, and the like now fill walls, chambers, and pillars. And they're multicolored, too: Reddish ones died of the plague, while yellowish ones perished of cholera.