Catacombs - A Place for Urban Exploration

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Every now and then someone would get lost or there would be a cave-in when a city worker was working on the catacombs. In 2017 three teenage boys also decided to dip down into the quarries and they went missing and were found three days later thanks to some search dogs who sniffed them out. If all the death down there doesn't freak you out there's also the threat of getting a ticket from so-called catacombs on patrol but if you decide to do the legal ticketed route they space these self-guided tours out with docents and guards stationed all along the way.

Let’s get spooky. Venture below Parisian streets and into the catacombs: hundreds of miles of subterranean tunnels housing millions of human skeletons, some fashioned into sculpture. Alie tracked down Dr. Erin-Marie Legacey – author of “Making Space for the Dead,” professor of French history and one of the world’s foremost experts on this eerie place. We chat about everything from miasmas to sinkholes, boggling cemetery history, smells, skulls, hidden chambers, (very) underground parties, and how we view our bodies post-life. Also: Alie takes a trip to see them herself.

Dr. Legacy’s book, “Making Space for the Dead: Catacombs, Cemeteries, and the Reimagining of Paris, 1780-1830” on Bookshop.org and Amazon

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A donation went to: Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas