Pay a visit to the city of the dead...​

Les Catacombes de Paris are the ancient quarries of Paris in which bones of Parisians were stored in order to solve the overpopulation in the city’s cemeteries.  You can only visit a small section of these underground quarries that contain the remains of generations of Parisians.  The Paris catacombs run 20 meters underground, a 1500 meter-long maze of galleries stacked with bones and skulls.  Night after night a procession carried the remains from different cemeteries of Paris to their new resting place.  These included the bones of the Revolutionaries, DANTON and ROBESPIERRE.

Tour the Paris Sewers...​

Des Egoute de Paris. ​ Visit the “city beneath the city.”  Hold your nose and visit just a small labyrinth of the Paris sewers at the Sewer Museum.  See this incredible system that help made Paris the great city it is today.  See the work of Baron HAUSSMANN, the prefect for the Seine, and the engineer Eugene BELGRAND who thought up the present system of Parisian sewer and water supply networks. THE MUSEUM OF THE PARIS SEWERS Recently reopened after being closed for RENOVATIONS. They are now REOPENED to visit Tuesdays - Sunday. (closed Mondays)

The Cemeteries of Paris...​

​Cimetiere du Pere-Lachaise 

this is the largest cemetery in Paris is located in the 20th arrondissement, reputedly the most visited cemetery in the world.  It is impossible to list all of the celebrities who rest here (under the shade of 12,000 trees), alongside many of the more ordinary Parisians. 

Some of the people buried here: composers Frederic CHOPIN, George BIZET, French artists, GERICAULT and DAVID, writer Oscar WILDE along with the Americans Gertrude STEIN and Jim MORRISON.

Cimetiere du Montparnasse

 was used during the French Revolution for the burial of unclaimed bodies.  As one wanders through this cemetery you will come upon familiar and famous names such as Jean-Paul SARTRE, Guy de MAUPASSANT, BAUDELAIRE and popular French singer Serge GAINSBOURG.  Along with American artist MAN RAY and Italian sculpture Constantin Brancusi. 

Two other cemeteries of interest In Paris:

Cimetietre Passy and Cimetietre Picpus

Cimetiere du Montmartre

 opened officially on January 1, 1825 as the Cimetiere du Nord.  In the 16th century quarries occupied the land where the cemetery is now located.  In a romantic forest of overwhelming calm one can visit the famous personalities that reflect this area’s artistic and theatrical past: Francois TRUFFAUT, Alexander DUMAS Jr., Edgar DEGAS, Yaslav NIJINSKI and pop diva DALIDA.

Cemetery Passy was opened in 1820 located an expensive residential and commercial district near the Place Trocadero. This is a small cemetery that fast became an aristocratic necropolis in Paris. It sits in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Impressionist painters Edouard Manet and Berthe Morisot, Composers Claude DeBussy and Gabriel Faure and Bao Dai, the last emperor of Vietnam all rest in this small cemetery.

Cemetery Picpus is another small but private cemetery hidden behind a wooden door in the 12th Arrondissement. The guillotined would be set up at Place de la Nation during the French Revolution. A mass grave would grow here due to the citizens of Paris executed. These graves rest on lands seized from the Convent of the Chanoinesses de St-Augustin. 1,306 victims of the guillotine rest here along with 16 Carmelite nuns guillotined on 17 July 1794. Marquis (General) de Lafayette followed his wife’s family to this location. They had been executed during the French Revolution, but his death was from natural causes. (Lafayette is buried with dirt from Bunker Hill and an American flag flies above his grave. The Nazis did not tough this flag when they occupied Paris in the Second World War.)