from Hacker News

The fight between cataphiles and police in the Paris catacombs

by dave1010uk on 11/5/23, 12:51 PM with 42 comments

  • by jmcomets on 11/8/23, 9:12 AM

    Another fact not mentioned in this article is the WWII historical locations found in the unofficial Catacombs. Back when I lived in Paris, I was lucky enough to know someone who had access to one of the Cataphiles' maps (yearly-updated with notes on entrances and potential police patrols, with closest exits and dangerous passages).

    We visited an old school basement, which was used as a bunker for members of the Resistance. The school itself was razed and rebuilt over at some point, but the Catacombs still hold traces of this period. Being there felt very...intimate. Nothing like you'd see in a museum or a documentary, we were in the same place as those back then.

  • by Scoundreller on 11/8/23, 6:33 AM

    Some really old (some 10 years old, wow, geriatric on the web) websites still hosted by free.fr:

    http://catacombes.web.free.fr/

    http://exploration.urban.free.fr/carrieres/indexus.htm

  • by olalonde on 11/8/23, 2:35 PM

    I highly recommend this video on a group of cataphiles who setup a temporary movie theater and bar in the catacombs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auI8QkL74S8

  • by ornornor on 11/10/23, 10:58 AM

    > Carthusian monks converted the ancient quarries under their monastery into distilleries for the green or yellow liqueur that still carries their name, chartreuse.

    Is that right? Chartreuse is named after the eponymous mountain in the alps, on the other end of the country and it’s been made there for ages because it’s made out of plants and herbs that grow nearby and nowhere near Paris.

  • by joloooo on 11/8/23, 4:02 PM

    There's a good couple of chapters on the catacombs in Robert Macfarlane's book The Underland (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/53121631)

  • by SliceOfWaifu on 11/8/23, 3:31 PM

    I just rewatched "As Above So Below" the other day. Didn't know messing around in the catacombs is something people actually did in real life.

  • by kylebenzle on 11/8/23, 5:01 AM

    Sad to see they are planning on filling them up with concrete:(

  • by t0lo on 11/8/23, 3:40 AM

    Catacombs isn't the first thing I'd think of when I hear the word 'cataphile'