Catacombs of Paris
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40 free Catacombs of Paris trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Beneath the streets of southern Paris lies one of the strangest museums in the world: a maze of old quarry tunnels lined with neatly stacked human bones. The Catacombs of Paris began as a practical fix for a city whose graveyards were overflowing, and they have been collecting odd stories ever since. This quiz gathers the best fun facts about the Paris Catacombs. It covers how and why the bones were moved, the engineers who turned a dumping ground into a monument, famous names lost in the piles, the illegal explorers who roam the closed tunnels, and the films, bands and heists that keep the place in the news. It suits curious travellers planning a visit, history fans, and anyone who enjoys a slightly spooky story. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave with facts worth repeating.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01About how many people's bones were moved from overflowing cemeteries into the Catacombs of Paris?
6 million
The 6 million skeletons arrived between the 1780s and 1860, tipped down quarry shafts and later stacked into neat walls.
Q 02In 2004, what did Paris police find hidden in tunnels under the Trocadéro, complete with a stocked bar?
A cinema
A cinema with a giant screen, seats and film reels had been secretly built by a group called les UX. When police came back, it had been dismantled and a note told them not to search.
Q 03Which company paid €350,000 in 2015 for a stunt inviting guests to sleep in the Catacombs of Paris?
Airbnb
Airbnb staged the sleepover for publicity. Illegal explorers called cataphiles had long been slipping into the wider tunnel network for free.
Q 04In the 2024 Netflix thriller Under Paris, what predator lurks in the city's flooded catacombs?
A shark
A shark named Lilith, a mako that has mutated to live in fresh water, swims up the Seine and breeds beneath the city.
Q 05The Catacombs of Paris are entered at the Barrière d'Enfer, two old pavilions whose name means what?
Gate of Hell
Gate of Hell is the literal meaning, taken from the old Rue d'Enfer. The square around it was later renamed for Colonel Denfert-Rochereau, whose surname sounds exactly like d'Enfer.
Q 06In 2017, thieves broke into a basement from the Catacombs of Paris and stole €250,000 worth of what?
Wine
Wine worth over €250,000 was taken after the gang got in through the tunnels, which stretch far beyond the short route tourists see.
Q 07What animals did an inspector place in a fountain in the Catacombs of Paris in 1813, where they went blind?
Goldfish
Goldfish were Héricart de Thury's experiment: he put four in the basin of the Samaritan Fountain, and they survived but could not breed.
Q 08In the early 1800s, what crop did growers begin raising in the dark abandoned quarries beneath southern Paris?
Mushrooms
Mushrooms were sheltered from the weather in the tunnels, which is why the common button variety is still sold in France as the champignon de Paris.
Q 09Which Revolution figure, guillotined in 1794, lies among the anonymous bones in the Catacombs of Paris?
Robespierre
Robespierre was buried in the Errancis Cemetery after his execution, and its bones were later moved underground. No individual skeleton there can be identified.
Q 10A sign over the ossuary doorway in the Catacombs of Paris warns visitors to stop at the empire of what?
Death
Death gets top billing on the lintel, one of many solemn inscriptions added around 1810 when the loose bones were rebuilt into tidy walls.
Q 11What building stone was dug from the quarries that later became the Catacombs of Paris?
Limestone
Limestone from these pits built medieval churches, the Louvre castle and the city walls, leaving a honeycomb of empty galleries beneath the streets.
Q 12Which animal statue by the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty stands outside the Catacombs of Paris?
A lion
A lion by Frédéric Bartholdi dominates Place Denfert-Rochereau, a one-third-scale copy of his giant original in the town of Belfort.
Q 13The Catacombs of Paris borrowed their name from the ancient underground burial galleries of which city?
Rome
Rome had the original catacombs, tombs dug along the Appian Way. The Paris site is really an ossuary: nearly all of its bones were first buried in the city's cemeteries and moved in later.
Q 21In 1780, what gave way beside the largest cemetery in Paris under the weight of a mass grave?
A cellar wall
A cellar wall in a house on the Rue de la Lingerie burst under the pressure, and the cemetery was shut for good. Burials inside the city were then banned.
Q 22Because exposures took so long, what did Nadar pose as workers in his 1861 photos of the Catacombs of Paris?
Mannequins
Mannequins stood in for the labourers during three months of experiments that produced some of the first photographs ever taken by artificial light.
Q 23What is said to have identified Philibert Aspairt's body, found under Paris eleven years after he vanished?
His key ring
Q 14Which 2014 horror film about a hunt for the philosopher's stone was shot in the real Catacombs of Paris?
As Above, So Below
As Above, So Below got its permit on the eve of filming, and the crew worked in both the public route and the off-limits tunnels.
Q 15Which pop star, credited under her real name Alecia Moore, co-starred in the 2007 horror film Catacombs?
Pink
Pink played the heroine's sister Carolyn in the chiller, which was mostly shot on soundstage sets in Bucharest rather than under Paris.
Q 16Which American rock band filmed the acoustic concert Alive in the Catacombs beneath Paris in 2024?
Queens of the Stone Age
Queens of the Stone Age became the first act to play there legally with the city's permission, and stripped the set down to match the bare surroundings.
Q 17In the 1944 liberation of Paris, who ran a command post from a shelter under Place Denfert-Rochereau?
The French Resistance
The French Resistance leader Colonel Rol-Tanguy directed the uprising from the shelter, and the avenue outside now carries his name.
Q 18Which king created a quarry inspection service in 1777 after Paris streets began collapsing into old mines?
Louis XVI
Louis XVI set up the inspectorate after a stretch of road dropped into a forgotten mine in 1774. Its first chief, Charles-Axel Guillaumot, went on to create the ossuary.
Q 19To avoid angering Parisians and the Church, when were bones carted to the Catacombs in the 1780s?
At night
At night, wagons draped in black cloth rolled out of the city behind chanting priests, then tipped their loads down a quarry shaft.
Q 20Which overflowing cemetery beside Les Halles market was the first emptied into the Catacombs of Paris?
Holy Innocents
Holy Innocents had been in use for nearly ten centuries before it closed in 1780. A market took its place, and the cemetery's old fountain still stands on the square.
His key ring from the Val-de-Grâce hospital, where he was doorkeeper, is said to have given him away. The tale has him lost in 1793 only a short walk from an exit staircase.
Q 24The Catacombs of Paris lie in which Left Bank district, also home to a famous skyscraper?
Montparnasse
Montparnasse is home to the Place Denfert-Rochereau entrance, and its big cemetery also sits on top of old quarries that were later filled with bones.
Q 25What was the ancient name of Paris, which geologists borrowed for the rock layer the Catacombs were cut into?
Lutetia
Lutetia lent its name to the Lutetian, a span of geological time in the Eocene for which this site is an international reference.
Q 26Which Saint-Saëns piece did an orchestra play at a secret midnight concert in the Catacombs of Paris in 1897?
Danse macabre
Danse macabre was on the bill beside Chopin's Funeral March, played by 45 musicians for about a hundred invited guests who had been told to arrive discreetly.
Q 27What were the two pavilions at the entrance to the Catacombs of Paris built to do in the 1780s?
Collect taxes
Collect taxes on goods entering the city: that was the job of the wall these tollhouses belonged to, which made them an early target for rioters in July 1789.
Q 28Act 3 of which Puccini opera is set at the Barrière d'Enfer, the gateway where the Catacombs of Paris begin?
La Bohème
La Bohème opens its third act at the barrier on a February morning, with Mimì arriving to find the tavern where her friends are staying.
Q 29Which great chemist, guillotined in the French Revolution, has bones in the Catacombs of Paris?
Antoine Lavoisier
Antoine Lavoisier, who named oxygen, was executed in 1794 and buried in the Errancis Cemetery, whose contents were later carted underground.
Q 30What covered the Paris region in the Eocene epoch and laid down the rock the Catacombs are cut from?
A tropical sea
A tropical sea left metres of sediment that hardened into rock, and fossil shells of giant sea snails still turn up in the walls.