Paris Catacombs Map: the Route, the Exit and the Closed Quarries

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

Where the entrance is, where the exit is, what the 1.5 km circuit covers, and where the network stops being legal to enter. The Paris Catacombs Tours departures all start above ground, but not all of them start at the same door.

The two addresses that matter

The two doors being different is the single most useful thing to know before you go. It is why there is no cloakroom, why bags are capped at 40 × 30 × 20 cm, and why a taxi booked to the entrance for your finish time will be in the wrong place.

The circuit, in order

1. Down the spiral. 131 steps to 20 metres below street level.
2. The quarry galleries. Roughly twenty minutes of bare limestone, with carved street names overhead.
3. The inscribed doorway. The threshold of the ossuary proper.
4. The bone galleries. The bulk of the visit: walls, plaques, monuments, the Samaritan Fountain and the Sepulchral Lamp.
5. The climb out. 112 steps and a bag check, onto a different street.

20 metres down: what that means

The ossuary sits about twenty metres under the surface, which is roughly the depth of a five-storey building. Around 11,000 m² of the network is fitted out for visitors, lit, drained and monitored. That is the part with a floor you can walk and a door at each end.

Where the tours meet — and why it is not always the entrance

Two departures gather away from the door, at a café a few minutes’ walk off, so the group can be counted before it goes down. Check your confirmation rather than assuming.

The barrier: what the public route does not reach

The visitor circuit is a small fraction of what is down there. Beyond the gates lies a vast network of former quarry galleries running under several arrondissements — unlit, unmapped in places, partly flooded, and closed.

Entering it is an offence and the police patrol it. There is no tour, licensed or otherwise, that takes visitors past the barrier; anything advertised as such is not what it claims to be. The restricted-access departures open locked chambers inside the managed site, which is a different thing entirely.

Getting back across Paris from the exit

1. Métro 4 from Alésia or Mouton-Duvernet, both under ten minutes on foot.
2. Back to Denfert-Rochereau in about nine minutes if you left something there.
3. Montparnasse is twenty minutes north on foot, for the mainline stations.

What it is like inside covers the walk itself, and legends and cataphiles deals with the closed network and the people who go into it. Hours and prices are on the visiting guide.