Which Paris Catacombs Tour to Book

Hours, prices and access verified by the Paris Catacombs Tours team — last checked August 14, 2026

Eight departures, one ossuary, and fares that run from the price of a museum ticket to nearly three hundred dollars. This guide sorts them by what actually differs — group size, access, length and refunds — and names which one suits which traveller.

What are you actually choosing between?

Every departure below goes to the same place: the 1.5 km public circuit of the 1.5 km ossuary, 20 metres under the 14th arrondissement, on a timed slot. Fares run from From $43 to From $292 per person, and that spread is not about comfort. There is no premium seating underground and no shortcut on the stairs.

Four things actually differ. How many people walk with you. Whether a person or a headset does the talking. Whether anyone opens a gate the public route does not use. And what happens to your money if your plans change. Get those four right and the rest of the choice makes itself.

Does the entry ticket on its own show you the whole ossuary?

Yes. This is the part most comparisons skip. The €31 admission includes an audio guide, and it covers the entire public route — the quarry galleries, the inscribed doorway, the bone walls, the named monuments and the climb out. Nothing on the public circuit is held back for people who paid more.

So the honest starting position is that a ticket is enough for a large share of visitors, and the cheapest listing here is exactly that ticket held on a fixed slot. If your question is whether you will see the Catacombs properly without a guide, the answer is that you will.

What does a live guide add that the audio guide cannot?

Three things, and they are worth naming precisely. A guide answers the question you actually have rather than the one recorded for everyone. A guide sets the pace, which matters in a narrow gallery when the group in front stops for photographs. And on some departures a guide carries the authority to take you through a locked gate.

What a guide does not buy you is a different ossuary. The commentary is richer and the hour holds together better; the route through the public galleries is the same one the headset walks.

Every departure, side by side

Ratings, review counts and inclusions come from each departure’s own booking listing; the official admission rates come from the Ville de Paris.

Read that table by column, not by row. The price column on its own explains almost nothing; the group column and the access column between them explain most of the gap.

How much does group size change the visit?

More than anything else on the page. The galleries are narrow, the ceiling is low in places and the acoustics are poor, so a group of nineteen strings out and the people at the back hear half of it. A group of six stands together and talks.

The caps here run from six to nineteen, and two departures sit at the small end deliberately: one at six travellers, one at seven. If you have ever come out of a walking tour feeling you followed a raised umbrella rather than a person, that is the difference you are buying, and it is the upgrade most people notice most.

Which departures open the locked gates?

Five of the eight name access beyond the public circuit in their own inclusions. What they open varies, and the specific ones are worth reading: one names an underground chapel and the quarrymen’s carvings, another names two restricted chambers and the Tonneau in the Crypt of the Passion, and the rest describe rooms closed to general admission without listing them.

The three that do not claim it are the self-guided ticket, the ticket-and-cruise combination and one guided walk. They are not lesser visits; they are the public route, done well. The premium and what it opens is worked through in the restricted access guide.

Ninety minutes or two hours — what does the extra half hour buy?

The official guidance for the public route is about an hour for the 1.5 km, at your own pace. A ninety-minute departure covers that with a guide stopping to explain. A two-hour departure covers it with a guide stopping to explain and time inside the side chambers.

Underground time is the fairer way to compare than total duration: the ticket-and-cruise booking runs three hours, but only the first part of it is spent below street level. If your day is tight, the ninety-minute walks give up the least of it.

Which departures refund, and which keep your money?

Most refund in full up to 24 hours before the start. One asks for two days’ notice instead, which is easy to miss when you book on a Friday for a Sunday. Two do not refund at all — the self-guided ticket and one guided walk — and both say so plainly on their own listing.

What is in the fare, and what never is

Every guided departure here includes the admission ticket. None of them asks you to buy entry separately, which is the single most common worry and the easiest to settle: the fare you see is the fare that gets you through the door.

What sits outside the fare is consistent too. Gratuities are never included. Hotel pick-up is not offered on any of them, so you are making your own way to Denfert-Rochereau (lines 4 and 6, RER B) whatever you book. Food and drink are excluded, and in any case neither can be consumed underground. The ticket-and-cruise booking is the one that adds something unusual — an hour on the Seine with commentary, and entry to a set of Paris museum exhibitions — which is why it costs less than the guided walks while covering more of the day.

Where each departure starts, and where it leaves you

The entrance is 1 avenue du Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy, 75014 Paris, across from Denfert-Rochereau (lines 4 and 6, RER B). Guided departures ask you to be there fifteen minutes early, and two of them gather away from the door before walking over, so read the meeting point rather than assuming it.

Everything ends the same way: at 21 bis avenue René-Coty, nearly 700 metres from where you went in. That single fact reorganises an afternoon more than any other, and it is mapped on the route and map page.

Which one is yours

You want to see it and keep the cost down

The self-guided ticket with the audio guide. It is the whole public route for a fraction of the guided fares, and the audio guide was rewritten for the 2026 reopening.

You want a guide, not a crowd

One of the two semi-private departures, capped at six and seven. This is where the money goes furthest if conversation matters to you.

You want the rooms nobody else walks through

A restricted-access departure. Read what each one names, because the additions differ, and pick the one whose list you actually want to see.

You have one afternoon and want more than an hour underground

The Catacombs and Seine cruise booking. It is the only listing here that builds the rest of the afternoon for you.

You are bringing teenagers

A guided walk on a fixed slot. The stories hold attention in a way a headset does not, and under-14s must be with an adult in any case.

Who should not book a guided departure at all?

Anyone whose main constraint is time or budget. If you have ninety minutes free and From $43 to spend, the ticket does the job and you will not feel short-changed.

Anyone travelling with someone who may need to turn back should also think about the ticket rather than a group: on your own timing you can stop, and on a guided departure the group keeps moving. The access post works through the stairs, the cold and the dark honestly.

What we would book

For a first visit with an interest in the place rather than the photographs, a semi-private departure: six or seven people, ninety minutes to two hours, and a guide close enough to ask about the inscription over the door. For a first visit on a budget, the ticket, without hesitation.

For a second visit, the restricted-access departures are the only thing that shows you something new, and that is what the premium is for. Every fare, duration and refund window sits on the Paris Catacombs Tours comparison, and the shortlist above is where most readers land.

Frequently asked questions

Tours that fit this trip

Chosen for what this guide covers, not for what sells.

Paris Catacombs Entry Ticket and Audio Guide

4.6 · 12,076 reviews · 1 hour

The floor of the market: timed entry and the audio guide, nothing else.

From $43 per person

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Paris Catacombs Guided Tour

4.9 · 248 reviews · 1 hour 30 minutes

A live guide on the public route for the shortest guided slot here.

From $163 per person

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Paris Catacombs Semi-Private Max 6 People Guided Tour

5.0 · 236 reviews · 1 hour 30 minutes

The smallest group on the site, and a guide you can hold a conversation with.

From $245 per person

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