The Underground City Beneath Paris: Inside the Cataphile Movement
Descending through a manhole on a rainy Paris night, one urban explorer says it feels “like the Upside Down from Stranger Things“[1]. What lies beneath is a hidden city: 280 kilometers of tunnels and quarries stretching under the City of Light, home to an outlaw subculture of “cataphiles” (self-styled lovers of the below) who illegally roam where the official tour does not go[2][3]. This is the story of that underworld: its secret gatherings, art installations, terrifying labyrinths and strict etiquette. It is a tale of youth rebellion and creative zeal beneath a metropolis obsessed with image and control.
Section Index
The catacombs themselves were carved out over centuries to supply limestone for Paris’s monuments and later as a municipal ossuary, housing the bones of some six million Parisians when city cemeteries overflowed in the 18th century[4]. But only a few kilometers of those caverns (the neatly arranged bone-lined galleries at Denfert-Rochereau) are legally open to tourists. Every other tunnel was sealed off by decree in 1955 on safety grounds[5][3]. Inside, specialized police units nicknamed cataflics and catacops patrol (locating bodies and graffiti), and manhole covers are welded shut to seal hidden entrances[5]. Despite the law and danger, a restless cadre of Parisians continues to slip through secret shafts, metro drains and tiny “cat-flaps” (tunnels called chatières) to party, create art and explore the depths that official tourism won’t touch[5][6]. “The cataphile community is absolutely huge,” one veteran explorer told National Geographic, “encompassing hundreds of thousands of people. People go down there to party, explore, relax, even just to take their dogs for a walk”[7].
Mapping the Underworld
Only a tiny segment of the vast mine network is mapped on official Paris maps. Beneath the old arrondissements lies “another Paris”, as underground inspector Guillaumot once called it, a hidden town of galleries ten times the size of Central Park[8]. Walls of the tunnels are often inscribed with street names above, but the network is so convoluted that even veteran cataphiles carry hand-drawn maps or trained guides. These maps (passed around in PDFs or on paper) are updated by explorers each time a tunnel is flooded or a new passageway is dug[9]. A single misstep can mean wandering miles off course: one Parisian study advised that no one attempt the tunnels without an experienced guide and a map[9]. Even then, armed with torches and telephone lines to echo above, explorers stress the labyrinth’s hazards: mud-choked “airlocks” that trap casual trespassers, sudden drop-offs into murky water and unstable pillars that can collapse without warning[10][11]. Accidents are not rare (cataphile Claire once “woke in a hospital after a serious injury underground”[12]) and more than one DIY spelunker has been found lost, hypothermic and exhausted.
For more information on A Story In Paris check out the production’s official page.
The police are well aware of this sub-city. The October 2022 Halloween crackdown caught 199 people inside and fined them as much as €1,500 each for trespassing[13]. Out of 280 kilometers of passage, only a few old cemeteries have bones, but blundering into flood chambers or collapse zones can be fatal. In 2017 two teenagers lost for three days had to be rescued by firefighters and sniffer dogs (“It was thanks to the dogs that we found them,” one official said[14]). The French police even have a special “cataphile” unit led by Major Sylvie Gautron, who insists there are “no racketeering or death” incidents underground apart from historic accidents[15]. Indeed, Gautron noted that “the last person known to have died” in the catacombs was a quarryman lost in 1793[15]. Still, every year “hundreds of people” slip past welded entrances via hidden shafts or metro tunnels, defying the ban with the risk of a €60 fine (or much higher penalties for dangerous trespass)[16][13].
The Cataphile Code
For all the legal peril, cataphiles insist on a code of respect beneath the city. In fact, veteran explorers describe it in almost communal terms: sharing food, drinks and light, never selling anything, and leaving the caves cleaner than they found them. As one New Yorker guide learned from his mentor, the descending creed is simple: “Respect the past of the catacombs. Take out what you take in… No selling and no buying: barter exchange or gifting are the only acceptable modes of transaction. Help is to be given wherever necessary. Create with care and do not destroy”[17]. Maps and makeshift signposts are updated like a living archive: christenings of new tunnels with graffiti nameplates, fresh murals covering blank walls, or even tombstone-style stelae erected by anonymous hands. The white limestone corridors are often adorned by art (ranging from political slogans and zombie skulls to sprawling mosaics), each piece representing a cataphile’s way of marking themselves in the earth[8]. “The further in we get, the better the wall art gets,” says Lina, a guide whose group discovered “Hokusai’s Wave” painted on stone.
Many cataphiles approach their nocturnal outings as more than thrill-seeking: some have formed an unofficial “University of the Catacombs,” driven to study the network’s history, preserve carved graffiti and continue the work of the original quarrymen. In 2004, for instance, police stumbled on a huge hidden chamber that doubled as a cinema and bar[18][19]. Inside that 400-square-meter “amphitheatre” a projector played classic film noirs and thrillers, chairs were carved into rock faces, and bottles of whisky sat behind a makeshift bar (complete with an electric generator and even phone lines running from the surface)[18][19]. Nearby a note in the dust warned, “Do not try to find us.”
This mix of creativity and secrecy is typical. One cataphile described long nights deep inside, wielding carbide lamps like ‘fireflies’ to light the way[20]. She and her friends even hold themed dinners (raclette or fondue around candlelit stone tables) and occasional pet-friendly outings (“take their dogs for a walk” underground)[21][7]. Halloween, carnival or impromptu concerts also descend below; in recent years explorers have reported everything from ‘Costume cheese parties’ to poetry nights in decorated vaults[22]. At the center of these gatherings is often a crude chisel-cut tunnel (“a chatière” or cat-flap) that only the slim or fearless can navigate, leading to a hidden chamber fitted as a dance floor or snug hideaway. As one veteran warns novices, if you are going to risk three-day rescue, “it’s not just for one or two hours” so come prepared with water, food and flashlights[23].
Parties, Art and the Dark Lights
The image of reckless underground orgies (skulls and bones strewn everywhere under disco balls) is largely a myth. The reality, cataphiles say, is more mundane and friendlier than tabloids expect. “Usually when you come across someone, there’s music,” says Eliott, a forty-year-old explorer with eight years in the network[24]. Beer bottles are often stacked like hiking cairns on ledges, marking past picnics. Birthdays and group meets are common: in the Dazed interviews, one organizer says “it’s somewhere to get together with my friends… we’ll have raclette or fondue inside” the vaults[25]. One longtime visitor even hosted a multi-chamber cinema playing Lynch’s Eraserhead and Eisenstein’s Man with a Movie Camera for weeks, until police finally shut the show[26]. In short, some gatherings can rival any hip nightclub in spirit (minus the loud bass and with very few co-signers of authority).
Meanwhile, the most dedicated cataphiles work like custodians. They carve ornate sculptures from the bedrock (often art students practicing), build dioramas and gargoyle statues, or lay mosaic floors from ceramic tiles scavenged above ground[27]. Miners’ lamps (the old carbide kind) are preferred over LEDs not just for authenticity but for the warmer glow they cast on frescoed walls (despite the risk of explosion). And the only currency underground is craft: poems, art pieces, hand-drawn tract leaflets or invitations slipped under a fallen grate[22]. Indeed, leaving tags, stories or tiny clay pots of marbles (“tracts”) is how cataphiles announce themselves to the next passerby. There is even rumor of an underground pantheon: fresh rooms still get christened by pet projects like burying a sword in stone or installing 2,000-tile mosaics (acts that turn a cold quarry into a personal shrine).
To outsiders, this may sound strange (a feudal commune built on antique bones). But those inside call it simply “another layer to Paris”[28]. Here the frantic modern city dissolves: no cars, no ads, and remarkably few rules. Cataphiles pride themselves on politeness. In fact, most describe their subterranean journeys as oddly uplifting compared to sewers or wrecking-ball construction sites in the open city. “It’s really clean, compared to exploring the sewers,” says Leo, a new recruit who compares it to being in a closed ecosystem that everyone wants to keep pristine[29]. Similarly, one group’s near-religious contempt for outsiders is not born of snobbery but a self-preservation instinct: “Cataphiles hate journalists,” one told Dazed, “they hate videos posted on Instagram with hashtags”[30]. When well-meaning reporters or YouTubers do go viral showing hidden entrances, the result is typically swarms of amateurs who trample the place and leave garbage or broken beer bottles behind. “Then we’re left with abandoned trash, broken glass, and too many people getting hurt,” Claire says[30].
The Media Frenzy and Urban Legends
Lately that problem has intensified with social media. A few cataphile-run YouTube channels and TikTok influencers have turned the act of going down underground into entertainment. Amateur videos boasting “24 Hours in the Catacombs” or DIY guides rack up views, turning the illegal into spectacle. Search engine data (and everyday knowledge) confirm a surge of curiosity: phrases like “Paris cataphiles,” “cataphiles underground party,” or even “how to become a cataphile” are being typed by tens of thousands every month. Every blog about Paris nightlife seems to hitch to the catacombs for clicks. The city’s authorities have noticed.
Don’t forget to check out “A Story In Paris” Behind The Screenplay page for more information on the writing inspiration and process.
In November 2023, a viral TikTok video by user @americanfille drew nearly 50 million views by spinning a lurid tale of “snatchers” living below Paris[31]. She warned young people that unseen underground clans would steal their flashlights and maps, leaving them trapped in darkness[31]. Her message (“Do not ever go into the Paris Catacombs!” she implored) resonated with millions of viewers, who bombarded the comments with fear and fascination[32]. The Paris police were not amused. Major Gautron herself went on record calling the claims “totally false,” noting “no one lives down there” and “the last death” had been during the 18th-century rebuild of Paris’s foundation[15]. In short, the cataphiles’ role remains that of trespassers, not subterranean brigands.
At the same time, TikTok and YouTube have also provided a megaphone for real explorers. Anonymous vloggers don Kevlar jackets and headlamps for dramatic “down-the-manhole” videos, sometimes showing off elaborate hidden rooms, mapped routes and ornate murals. Police have sometimes traced these clips back to suspects. Halloween 2022 saw nearly two hundred people caught on camera below the surface, many of them foreign students or party seekers[13]. Fines and arrests aside, the sensation is clear: to a generation raised on vloggers and reality stunts, the catacombs have become a natural next frontier. Even guidebooks and magazines are not immune (the channel History Channel produced a docudrama, and National Geographic ran a “Beneath Paris” feature last spring). Popular culture and high literature are nodding too: Robert Macfarlane mentions the catacombs in his book Underland, and in a suitably dark echo, Hugo Lunny’s novel A Story in Paris features a photographer named Thomas Girard who finds his only sanctuary amid Paris’s subterranean gloom. (Girard, who believes every camera steals a soul, would likely feel at home in the blacked-out tunnels, though in fiction only.)
All this exposure brings the old tension to a boil. Veteran cataphiles bristle at the term “secret community” (they know they don’t really inhabit some lair like a Scooby-Doo cult). To them it is a form of urban spelunking or guerrilla archaeology. Yet they no longer see their hideouts as truly invisible. Crackdowns in recent years (by police, by floods and even by rumor) have closed off many entry points. A dozen known “cataphiles’ manholes” have been welded shut by the city as part of a survey called the Opération Comète[5]. Meanwhile, real-estate pressures and a push to commercialize Paris’s subterranean spaces have led officials to propose redeveloping parts of the network into museums or even hotels, concepts that the underground faithful watch with suspicion.
Still, tonight, at this moment in one tunnel alcove dozens of miles from Denfert-Rochereau, a small band of explorers hangs wild decorations and lights candles. They know this isn’t official “Le Catacombes” (but then again, everyone in their circle has a PDF map open on their phone). The bone stacks here are not as dense as in the tourist ossuaries, and indeed many plaques (street names) are new or missing. The group shares cheese and wine beneath the flickering lights. It is camaraderie built on maps and moonlight. Outside, in the city’s cafes and boulevards, Parisians are oblivious. As cataphile Eliott noted, people pass over these holes routinely “and they don’t care”[33]. In this private hour, miles underground, they have become something else (perhaps a hint of the fictional Thomas Girard, characters in their own subterranean tale, vulnerable to light and discovery yet thrilling to the silence only the dead can fully share).
