Paris Catacombs Tours: Questions Answered

Guided walks start at $132 and run to $293 per person, and a self-guided entry ticket with the audio guide starts at $43. The gap is mostly about access: the higher fares open gates the public route never reaches.

Yes. Only 200 people are allowed inside at a time, and the site urges you to book online rather than turn up. In July and August the slots go days ahead.

If you only want to see the ossuary, the €31 official ticket with the audio guide covers the whole route. A guided departure buys a reserved slot, someone to ask, and on five of these departures a guard who unlocks side chambers.

It is a guided departure whose operator holds an arrangement with the site to enter chambers closed to ticket holders — a skull-lined chapel, quarrymen's carvings, sealed galleries. Five of the eight departures sell that access.

Most of these tours refund in full up to 24 hours before the start. Two are non-refundable and one asks for two days' notice. Every Paris Catacombs booking on the card below states its own policy.

Not a fully private one, but two departures are capped at six and seven travellers, which is as close as it gets. The larger guided groups run to fourteen or nineteen.

No operator sells a ghost tour or a haunted tour of the ossuary, and the Ville de Paris does not run one. The restricted-access guided walks are the closest thing, and the story most people are after — the doorkeeper lost in 1793 — is on our legends page.

No. Last admission is 19:30 and the site closes at 20:30, so there is no night visit to book. The latest guided departures are late-afternoon slots.

Operators report their bookings running roughly three weeks to two months ahead across these listings. Weekends and the summer months go first.

Yes, though the caps are low: six, seven, fourteen, fifteen and nineteen travellers depending on the departure. Larger parties are easier to fit onto the self-guided ticket.

Closures for strikes or maintenance do happen, and operators contact you where they can. On the tours with free cancellation you are covered; on the two non-refundable ones you are not, which is worth weighing before you pay.

Every guided walk includes admission. None of them asks you to buy a separate ticket, and none needs you to join an official queue.

The official full rate is €31, the reduced rate €25 and children aged 8 to 17 pay €15, with under 8s go free. The audio guide is included in the price.

Official Paris Catacombs tickets are sold through the Ville de Paris ticket office at billetterie-parismusees.paris.fr. A guided tour is a separate purchase and already includes admission.

Paris Catacombs ticket prices are set by the Ville de Paris and were checked in August 2026. Tour fares are set by each operator and move with demand and season.

Children under 8 go free. The ticket office at billetterie-parismusees.paris.fr lists the other reduced and free categories and the proof each one needs.

The official advice is to book online, and with a 200-person cap the practical answer in season is to treat online booking as necessary. Arriving without a slot in August rarely works.

It means the operator holds a timed slot, so you walk to the group rather than to the ticket queue. It is the main reason people pay for a guided departure in summer.

Yes, on the official full and reduced tickets. It was rewritten for the April 2026 reopening and now runs in the voice of Louis-Étienne Héricart de Thury.

A Paris Catacombs reservation is a timed entry slot rather than an open ticket. You go in at the time printed on it, and arriving late can cost you the visit.

The Catacombs open Tuesday to Sunday, 09:45–20:30, with last admission at 19:30. They are closed on Mondays.

131 steps down and 112 back up, with no lift at either end. Wear shoes you can climb in and take the descent at your own pace.

The official guidance is about an hour for the 1.5 km circuit. The guided tours run 1 hour 30 minutes to 2 hours, because the guide stops.

About 14 °C all year, and humid with it. Take a layer even in August — the cool is a relief for ten minutes and a nuisance after forty.

No. The floors are uneven, the passages narrow and there is no lift, and the site does not recommend the visit for anyone with reduced mobility. No operator can work around it.

At 21 bis avenue René-Coty, nearly 700 metres from the entrance. That distance is exactly why there is no cloakroom, so carry nothing you would want to leave behind.

Only bags up to 40 × 30 × 20 cm. Suitcases, large bags and motorcycle helmets are refused at the door, and there is nowhere to leave them.

No, and none underground at all. Go before you descend; the exit is a fifteen-minute walk from the entrance once you allow for the stairs.

Denfert-Rochereau (lines 4 and 6, RER B) puts you across the road from the entrance at 1 avenue du Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy, 75014 Paris. Take the Sortie 1 exit and the gate is directly opposite.

Yes, and under-14s must be accompanied by an adult. The stairs, the dark and the subject matter suit older children far better than toddlers.

The site itself advises against the visit for anyone with claustrophobia, and the narrow passages and dim light are the reason. The galleries are wider than most people picture, but there is no short way out once you are in.

Yes, though tripods are not allowed and flash in a dark 14 °C gallery rarely gives you what you hoped for. Touching the bones is forbidden for everyone.

No. Download your ticket or voucher before you go down, and screenshot the meeting point if you are joining a group.

Guided departures ask for 15 minutes before the start time, and two of them meet away from the entrance. Allow more in summer, when Denfert-Rochereau is busy.

Closed shoes with grip and a layer you can put on. The floors are damp gravel and stone, and the temperature does not move with the season.

The Saints-Innocents cemetery closed in 1780 after centuries of overcrowding, and the disused limestone quarries beneath the city were consecrated as the Paris Municipal Ossuary on 7 April 1786. The transfers ran, on and off, until 1860.

They are the municipal ossuary of Paris: the remains of several million people, 20 metres below the 14th arrondissement in former limestone quarries. Around 11,000 m² of it is open to visitors.

The city describes several million men, women and children. The figure most often quoted is around six million, drawn from the cemeteries the transfers emptied.

About 20 metres below street level. The route is a 1.5 km one-way circuit, and it ends at a different street from the one you entered.

Inspector Héricart de Thury, between 1810–1814. Before him the bones were stacked as they arrived; the walls, crosses and inscriptions are his design.

On 8 April 2026, after closing in November 2025 for technical works. New lighting, air handling and humidity monitoring went in, and the Wall of the September Martyrs was rebuilt in dry stone. The audio guide was rewritten at the same time.

No. The 1.5 km ossuary circuit is the only lawful visit; the rest of the network is closed and entering it is an offence. What you see below is the part the city keeps open and lit.

Philibert Aspairt was a doorkeeper at the Val-de-Grâce hospital, lost in the quarries on 3 November 1793 and found eleven years later. He was buried where he lay on 30 April 1804, behind what is now the barrier.

Yes. They are human remains moved here from the city's cemeteries, and the site asks visitors not to touch them or the monuments.

It is run by the Ville de Paris and sits within the Paris Musées network. That is why official tickets are sold through the city's own box office rather than by a private operator.