19 Creepy Catacombs Around the World You Can Visit

Catacombs—underground rooms and tunnels used as cemeteries—date back to first-century Rome, but the most famous (and infamous) were created across Europe in the 17th century. Overcrowding in Paris’s more traditional burial spaces, as well as sanitation issues, led authorities to turn the miles of tunnels connecting quarries under the city into crypts. It’s believed that more than six million people were laid to rest in this underground labyrinth. In some places, bones and skulls line the walls, with a few even crafted into intricate works of art. While Paris might get all the headlines, such sprawling crypt networks exist all over the world. Take the city of León, Mexico, where the beautiful Templo Expiatorio, a Neo-Gothic church, also provides entry to an underground world. Formed by a connection of seven different crypts, this catacomb has cramped, dark corridors that hold the remains of nearly 2,000 people. Elsewhere, the Catacombs of Washington, D.C., were created by Franciscan monks who wanted to channel the Holy Land for those who couldn’t afford a trip overseas. From catacombs across Malta to little-known collections of bones beneath monasteries, here are some of our favori…