The Most Remarkable Catacombs in Europe
8 places in 2 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most remarkable catacombs in Europe are Catacombs of Paris (France), Catacombe dei Cappuccini (Italy) and Catacomb of Priscilla (Italy). The list covers 8 catacombs in 2 countries. Italy has the most, with 7. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Catacombs depend on soft rock. The volcanic tuff of Naples and the limestone of Paris and Palermo could be cut with hand tools, so early Christians dug burial galleries outside city walls, and later centuries reused quarries and crypts as ossuaries when cemeteries overflowed. What survives ranges from painted early Christian chambers to halls where bones were arranged as deliberate memento mori.
The Catacombs of Paris fill old limestone quarries beneath the city with the remains of millions of Parisians, moved there from overcrowded cemeteries from the late 18th century and stacked in walls of skulls and long bones. The Catacombs of San Gennaro in Naples are early Christian galleries on two levels, with frescoes and the former tomb of the city's patron saint. Also in Naples, the Fontanelle cemetery is a vast tuff cavern filled with anonymous skulls once tended by local devotees. In Rome, the Capuchin Crypt decorates its chapels with the bones of friars arranged in patterns. The Catacombe dei Cappuccini in Palermo keep mummified bodies standing and lying in their clothes.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Catacombs of Paris | Catacombs | France | |
| 2 | Catacombe dei Cappuccini | Catacombs | Italy | |
| 3 | Catacomb of Priscilla | Catacombs | Italy | |
| 4 | Catacombs of San Gennaro | Catacombs | Italy | |
| 5 | Catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter | Catacombs | Italy | |
| 6 | Catacombs of Domitilla | Catacombs | Italy | |
| 7 | Fontanelle cemetery | Catacombs | Italy | |
| 8 | Capuchin Crypt | Catacombs | Italy |
01 Catacombs of Paris
Catacombes de Paris
France · 3.1 km from Paris48.834° N 2.332° E
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0 The story begins with the ground giving way. Much of the Left Bank sits on Lutetian limestone that had been mined, often without records, since the Middle Ages, and in 1774 a house on the rue d'Enfer collapsed into an old quarry. Louis XVI set up an inspection service to shore up the tunnels. At the same time the cemetery of the Holy Innocents, near Les Halles, had become a public health scandal; in 1780 a cellar wall beside it gave way under the weight of the mass graves. The solution was to move the dead into the consolidated quarries, and from the late 1780s covered wagons carried remains across the city by night. The Innocents alone had been used for some six centuries.
Did you know? Philibert Aspairt, a doorkeeper at the Val-de-Grâce hospital, vanished in the quarries in 1793; his body was found eleven years later, a few metres from an exit staircase.
02 Catacombe dei Cappuccini
Italy · 1.9 km from Palermo38.112° N 13.339° E
Giacomo Palermo · CC BY-SA 4.0 The effect today is of a vast, silent gathering. The halls are sorted by category, with separate corridors for friars, priests, professionals, men, women, virgins and children, and the clothes span three centuries of fashion, from clerical vestments to the everyday dress of each generation. A census in 2011 counted about 1,250 mummified bodies among roughly 8,000 dead. Relatives once visited regularly, prayed with the deceased and paid for their upkeep; when payments lapsed, a body could be moved off its niche to a shelf. The catacombs were officially closed to new burials in 1880, but exceptions continued into the twentieth century.
Did you know? In 2009 researchers identified Salafia's embalming formula: formalin, alcohol, glycerin, salicylic acid and zinc salts, the last giving the body its rigidity.
03 Catacomb of Priscilla
Catacombe di Priscilla
Italy · 4.2 km from Rome41.930° N 12.509° E
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain What draws people underground is the painting. In the so-called Greek Chapel, a small square chamber decorated in the third century, scenes from the Old and New Testaments cover the walls, among them the scene known as the Fractio Panis, the breaking of bread. Close by is a faded image of a woman holding a child beside a standing figure: it is generally read as the Madonna and Child with the prophet Isaiah, and is counted among the oldest known images of Mary, dating from the early third century. There is also an early image of the Good Shepherd, scenes of the three youths in the fiery furnace and of the raising of Lazarus.
04 Catacombs of San Gennaro
Catacombe di San Gennaro
Italy · 2.5 km from Naples40.864° N 14.248° E
Dominik Matus · CC BY-SA 4.0 Devotion made the catacombs grow: galleries were lengthened, new chambers opened and painted, and when the walls were full, graves were dug into the floor. Several of the finest images of early Christian Naples are here. Near the entrance is the oldest known portrait of San Gennaro, from the fifth century, showing the saint between a woman and a girl. In the Crypt of the Bishops, fifth-century mosaic portraits include Quodvultdeus, bishop of Carthage, who fled the Vandals by sea and was buried in Naples. The vestibule of the lower level keeps ceiling paintings in a Pompeian manner from the second and third centuries, four sarcophagi hewn from the tuff and a baptistery of 762.
Did you know? The lower level is the oldest, dating to the 3rd or 4th century, and may have begun as a pre-Christian cemetery.
05 Catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter
Catacombe dei Santi Marcellino e Pietro
Italy · 6 km from Rome41.879° N 12.549° E
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain Their fame rests on their paintings. More than eighty decorated chambers hold one of the most complete galleries of late antique art: the story of Jonah told in several scenes, Daniel among the lions, the raising of Lazarus, Moses striking water from the rock, Orpheus with his lyre, and a series of banquet scenes linked to funeral meals, both real and symbolic. The frescoes were cleaned with laser technology in a restoration programme that made the catacombs visitable. In the early 2000s excavators also found an extraordinary area of mass graves with thousands of skeletons, wrapped in textiles and plaster, dating from the first to the third century.
06 Catacombs of Domitilla
Catacombe di Domitilla
Italy · 4.8 km from Rome41.859° N 12.506° E
Anonymous Unknown author · Public domain The cemetery takes its name from Flavia Domitilla, a woman of the imperial Flavian family of Vespasian, on whose land the earliest burial grounds were dug. Its oldest core, the so-called hypogeum of the Flavians, goes back to the late second century; over the following two hundred years family tombs grew together into a vast communal necropolis, extended downward and outward as space ran out. Christian tradition associates Domitilla with the new faith, though historians are divided on whether she was a Christian herself.
Did you know? They are named after Flavia Domitilla, a member of Vespasian's imperial family, on whose land they were dug.
07 Fontanelle cemetery
Cimitero delle Fontanelle
Italy · 1.8 km from Naples40.858° N 14.239° E
Lalupa · CC BY-SA 3.0 The quarries supplied building stone for the city until about 1600. The bones began to arrive with the plague of 1656, which killed at least 300,000 people in the city, and kept coming for almost two centuries: remains cleared from crowded church burial vaults, and the dead of the cholera epidemic of the 1830s. A Neapolitan scholar of the 19th century, Andrea De Jorio, recorded that floods once washed bones out into the streets, after which they were gathered back into the caves and the place became the city's official charnel house for the poor.
Did you know? Its three galleries became known as the nave of the priests, the nave of the plague victims and the nave of the paupers, after the remains they hold.
08 Capuchin Crypt
Italy · 1 km from Rome41.905° N 12.489° E
Anil Öztas · CC BY 4.0 The friars moved to this church in 1631 and brought with them some 300 cartloads of remains from their old friary. The soil of the crypt, according to tradition, was brought from Jerusalem at the order of Pope Urban VIII. As each friar died, the one who had lain longest in the earth, often around thirty years, was exhumed to make room, and his bones were added to the decoration. The burials continued until 1870, the end of the period in which the Church allowed burial in and beneath churches.
Did you know? The friars were buried directly in the earth without coffins before being exhumed for display.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most remarkable catacombs in Europe?
- On our list, Catacombs of Paris (France) ranks first, followed by Catacombe dei Cappuccini (Italy) and Catacomb of Priscilla (Italy).
- Which country has the most catacombs in Europe?
- In our collection, the most come from Italy (7) and France (1).
- Why were the Paris Catacombs created?
- By the 18th century the city's cemeteries, above all the Holy Innocents, were overflowing and a health hazard. From 1786 the remains were moved into disused limestone quarries under the city, which became the municipal ossuary.
- What is the difference between catacombs and an ossuary?
- Catacombs are underground burial galleries where bodies were laid in niches, as in early Christian Rome and Naples. An ossuary holds bones gathered after the first burial, as in the Paris Catacombs, even though they are often called catacombs.
- How many catacombs are on this list in Europe?
- The list covers 8 catacombs in 2 countries. Italy has the most, with 7.