The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, was accused of desecrating the city’s catacombs yesterday after allowing Airbnb to rent the underground ossuary containing 6 million skeletons for Hallowe’en.
The US-based home rental website has paid about €300,000 to the council for the right to offer two of its users an opportunity to spend the night in the catacombs on October 31. The move has infuriated Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the head of the centre-right opposition in the city, who accused the socialist mayor of trading in death.
Airbnb says the winners of its competition will be the first people to wake up alive in the catacombs since skeletons began to be stored there in 1785.
Participants must explain on Airbnb’s Facebook page why they think they are brave enough to spend a night 20 metres under Paris amid rows of skulls and bones. The best explanation will be rewarded with a night for two among the dead.
Airbnb says that it will install a bed in the catacombs, and lay on a gastronomic meal and a concert for the winners. “Nightmares guaranteed,” says the website, which adds that guests cannot take pets with them and must respect “the tranquillity of your Parisian neighbours, alive and dead”.
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Ms Hidalgo said that the deal would help to pay for restoration of the catacombs, which were established in the 18th century after complaints about the stench from the Cemetery of the Innocent. They are now usually open to the public only in the daytime and attract 350,000 visitors a year.
Airbnb, which has 50,000 flats on offer in Paris, is keen to curry favour with the council amid claims that its development is destroying the local hotel industry.
The centre-right Républicains party in Paris, which is led by Ms Kosciusko-Morizet, issued a statement “deploring” the agreement. It accused Ms Hidalgo of failing to uphold a law which says that “respect due to the human body does not cease with death”.
The party added: “You cannot treat everything like a consumer product.”