Catacombs enthusiasts behind mystery of Paris prison tunnel

When telecoms workers unearthed the 12-metre space below a Left Bank street in Paris, authorities thought they had stumbled on a plot to dig prisoners out of La Santé, the fortress reserved for VIP convicts and famous gangsters 450m away. Inside there were only bags of rubble and a bed.

They concluded, however, that the incipient tunnel was more likely to be the work of “cataphiles”, devotees of Les Catacombes, the labyrinth of linked chambers quarried in the Middle Ages for the city’s limestone architecture.

The exposure of the secret tunnel has reminded Parisians of the millions of human bones beneath their feet and the enthusiasts who haunt the 150 miles of shafts and galleries that house them.

The remains of millions of people were put into the catacombs in the 18th century

BENOIT TESSIER/REUTERS

The storage of the bones of six