How to Visit the Paris Catacombs in 2026
Quick facts, before anything else
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Address | 1 avenue du Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy, 75014 Paris |
| Exit | 21 bis avenue René-Coty, nearly 700 metres away |
| Open | Tuesday to Sunday, 09:45–20:30 |
| Closed | Mondays |
| Last admission | 19:30 |
| Adult ticket | €31, audio guide included |
| Route | 1.5 km, about an hour |
| Depth | 20 metres below street level |
| Temperature | 14 °C, humid |
| Capacity | 200 visitors at a time |
The one thing that decides your day: the timed slot
Everything awkward about visiting the Catacombs comes from a single number. Only 200 people are permitted inside at once, on a site that draws several hundred thousand visitors a year. That cap is why entry is timed, why the queue outside can look immovable, and why arriving on spec in August is a poor plan.
There are three honest ways round it, and they are not equally good for everyone.
Book the official ticket. The Ville de Paris sells timed entry through its own box office at billetterie-parismusees.paris.fr. This is the cheapest route in, and it covers the whole public circuit with the audio guide. Full details and the current prices are on the visiting guide.
Book a guided departure. Operators hold their own reserved slots, so you walk to a group rather than a queue. Admission is inside the fare, and five departures can open side chambers that no ticket reaches.
Turn up and hope. Occasionally fine in February. Rarely fine in July.
What a ticket costs in 2026
Official admission is €31 full rate, €25 reduced, and €15 for children aged 8 to 17, with under 8s go free. The audio guide is included at every rate, which was not always the case.
Guided fares are a different scale, because you are buying access and a person rather than a door. They run from From $43 for a self-guided ticket bought through a platform up to From $292 for the fullest restricted-access walk. Whether that gap is worth it is the subject of the ticket-versus-guided comparison.
Getting there, and getting away
Denfert-Rochereau (lines 4 and 6, RER B) puts you across the road from the entrance. Take Sortie 1 and the gate is directly opposite; there is no other way in.
Getting away is the part people get wrong. The route is one way and surfaces at 21 bis avenue René-Coty, nearly 700 metres from where you went in, near Alésia and Mouton-Duvernet. A taxi booked to the entrance for your finish time will be in the wrong place, and the friend waiting in the café opposite the door will be waiting a while. The route and map page sets out both addresses.
The stairs, the cold, and what to carry
There are 131 steps down and 112 back up, with no lift at either end. The descent is a tight spiral, about two minutes, and the climb out is shorter but felt more.
It is 14 °C down there in February and 14 °C in August. For the first ten minutes of a hot day that is a relief; by the fortieth it is cold on bare arms. Take a layer and closed shoes with grip, because the floor is damp gravel and stone.
- Bags larger than 40 × 30 × 20 cm are refused at the door.
- There is no cloakroom, because the exit is nowhere near the entrance.
- There are no toilets on the route and none underground.
- There is no phone signal, so download your ticket first.
- Tripods are not permitted; ordinary photography is.
How long to allow
The city suggests about an hour for the 1.5 km circuit. Guided walks run 1 hour 30 minutes to 2 hours because the guide stops, and the restricted-access departures spend the extra time on chambers the public route passes. Add fifteen minutes at each end for stairs, bag checks and the walk back across the neighbourhood, and the honest figure for the whole errand is around two hours.
Who the visit does not work for
It suits anyone comfortable on stairs and content in an enclosed, cool space, which is most people. It does not work for wheelchair users, and the site advises against it for anyone with reduced mobility, claustrophobia, or a cardiac or respiratory condition. There is no lift and no short way out.
Children are welcome and under-14s must be with an adult. The access guide works through the practicalities properly — including the trick of taking the descent slowly rather than skipping the visit.
When to go
Mid-week mornings in the shoulder seasons are the quietest slots the site offers, and February mornings are quieter still. Weekend afternoons in July and August are the hardest to get and the busiest once you are in.
Time of day makes less difference underground than it does anywhere else in Paris — there is no light to chase and the temperature never moves. What changes is the number of people between you and the wall.
What the visit costs in time, not money
Budget two hours for the errand, not one for the visit. Fifteen minutes to find the entrance and clear the bag check, two minutes down, an hour on the route, three minutes up, five minutes at the exit working out where you are, and ten more walking to a station that is not the one you arrived at.
That is the shape of it whichever option you book. A guided departure adds thirty to sixty minutes underground and asks you to arrive fifteen minutes early, which makes the whole thing closer to two and a half hours. Neither version is a thing to squeeze between two other bookings.
What to do afterwards, while you are down there
You surface in a quiet residential corner of the 14th with most of an afternoon left. Montparnasse cemetery is a ten-minute walk and holds Beckett, Sartre and Baudelaire; the Jardin du Luxembourg is twenty minutes north; and the Denfert-Rochereau end has the cafés people actually use rather than the ones aimed at the queue.
It is a good pairing precisely because the ossuary leaves most people quiet for half an hour. Somewhere to sit beats somewhere to queue.
Booking checklist
- Pick a date, and check it is not a Monday.
- Decide between a ticket and a guide — the difference is access and a person, not the route.
- Book the slot before anything else on that day; everything else in Paris has more availability.
- Check the cancellation window on what you booked. They differ.
- Download the voucher, and screenshot the meeting point if it is a guided departure.
- Plan the journey home from the exit, not the entrance.
With that settled, what it is like inside covers the hour itself, and the Paris Catacombs tours comparison puts the departures side by side.
Tours that fit this trip
Chosen for what this post covers, not for what sells.
Paris Catacombs Entry Ticket and Audio Guide
The visit this post describes, on a held slot, at the lowest fare.
From $43 per person
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Paris Catacombs Special Access Tour
The slot is held and a guide sets the pace — the two hardest parts of the day.
From $160 per person
Check Availability
Paris Catacombs Entry & Seine River Cruise with Audio Guide
For a first day in Paris that wants more than an hour underground.
From $132 per person
Check Availability