There are only six known Jewish catacombs and around 40 or more Christian catacombs. In Ancient Rome, it was not permitted for bodies to be buried within the city walls. The Jewish population was already implementing this practice when Christians began doing so around the 2nd Century.
The use of catacombs in Rome expanded during the 2nd and 3rd Centuries, as the illegal religion of Christianity grew in popularity. Some areas of the tunnels even became shrines for martyrs buried there. But after Christianity was legalized in AD, funerals moved above ground, and by the 5th Century, the use of catacombs as grave sites dwindled, though they were still revered as sacred sites where pilgrims would come to worship.
The Rome catacombs then fell victim to pillaging by Germanic invaders around the early 9th Century. As a result, relics of Christian martyrs and saints were moved from the catacombs to churches in the city centre.
Despite the size of the challenge, Guillaumot pulled it off without much fuss. By the tunnels were stable and the remains of dead Parisians were being dug up every night and transferred into them. Above ground, public works went on hold for a few years while France had a revolution, executed a lot of people, and then slowly started to rebuild. When Napoleon marched to power on the back of the Revolution he inherited a medieval city that was in the throws of rapid modernization.
Given that Rome, which was considered the preeminent monumental city in Europe, already had its much-vaunted system of Catacombs that intrepid tourists could visit, Napoleon decided that France needed something similar.
Despite the ritual with which they were transferred, the bones had simply been dumped into the tunnels in large heaps. Slowly but surely the quarrymen lined the walls with tibias and femurs punctuated with skulls which form the basis of most of the decorations that tourists see today. Both out of whimsy and to convey deeper religious messages about death, they also arranged bones in various shapes, like hearts, circles and death heads.
They erected signs which serve as commemorative plaques and carved arrows into the ceilings so the first people visiting on catacomb tours who were seeing everything by the eerie flicker of candlelight would not lose their way. Not legal ones, mind you. One problem caused by the influx of visitors, both legal and illegal, was that skulls began to mysteriously vanish from their alcoves.
Initially, quarry workers replaced them with new skulls but they eventually stopped. At the rear of the chamber can be found a picturesque recreation of a medieval castle.
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