Besides the ancient metropolis of the world, several other old Italian towns possess remarkable catacombs or subterranean burial-places. Those of Naples, historically far less interesting than those of Rome, are executed on a far more spacious plan. They are situated not beneath the town itself, but in a neighbouring mountain, where they have been excavated to a distance of more than two miles. Large galleries, eighteen feet broad, and fourteen or fifteen high, branch out into a number of smaller passages, while the walls on both sides are pierced, like those in Rome, with horizontal sepulchral cavities, six, or even seven, one above the other. The Catacombs of Syracuse, under the site of the ancient Achradina, are the largest and best preserved known. They are all excavated in the solid rock, and form lofty vaults, very different from the narrow and dangerous burrows of subterranean Rome. A broad gallery runs through the whole of the labyrinth, and from this many other passages of an inferior width branch out, leading to large circular vaults with openings at the top for the admission of light. Many of these have been closed, as they were equally dangerous for the people in their neighbourhood and their cattle, so that torches are necessary for visiting them. Along the walls are a number of niches, which served as sepulchres, so that these excavations, which originally were quarries, and during the flourishing times of the city were used by its vast population for various household purposes, were ultimately converted into a city of the dead. The Catacombs of Paris, though ancient as quarries, are of a very modern date as places of sepulture. Until the end of the reign of Louis XVI. the principal burying-ground of Paris had been the Cemetery of the Innocents, near the church of the same name. Originally situated beyond the walls of the town, it had in course of time been so surrounded by the growing metropolis as to occupy its centre. Here, during nearly ten centuries, numberless bodies had been deposited, so that, from the malaria it engendered, it became a constant source of danger to the living. At length the cemetery became so intolerable a nuisance that its suppression and conversion into a public market-place was decreed in 1785.