Les secrets de la Ville de Lumiere

Unless otherwise noted, all pictures are copyright of my friend, travel partner, and fellow guerilla urbanist Steve Duncan. Steve is a wonderful photographer, and specializes in underground and urban photography. Prints are available - visit his website at http://www.undercity.org

Despite tossing and turning all night, we woke up later than we wanted to. But that was OK - our big constraint wasn’t time, but water. We decided to stay down and see what we could find until we ran dry.

The first thing we found was the tomb of Philbert Aspairt. Philbert was one of the original cataphiles - one day in 1793 he simply went down and never came back up. It was rumored he was looking for the wine cellars of the monks of Chartuese when his torch went out. Eleven years later he was found holding a ring of keys, just a few steps away from an exit. After hearing this story, I didn’t feel silly for carrying three extra flashlights around with me.

His wasn’t he only memorial to a deceased cataphile we found however - although I don’t believe Mr. HB actually died in the catacombs. And it also wasn’t the only writing we found down there - heck some of it wasn’t even in French.

We then made our way over to Abri Laval, a room mostly noteworthy for its tiled floor. There was also a mural there that made me just a bit homesick (which would have been worse if not for the stupid Ducky Boys). After this, we hit what turned out to be my favorite room, the Salle Z with its huge archways. After almost a whole day of watching my head, this room with its 12-foot high ceilings was a welcome relief.

While all the different rooms were interesting, the backbone of the catas are definitely its tunnels, with its myriads of offshoots, intersections, and splits, (sometimes even splitting three ways). Tunnels and rooms weren’t the only things down there that had variety though; there were also tons of different types of columns stabilizing the entire network.

That’s what the catacombs are: a network. About the same time poor Philbert disappeared, what used to be an unrelated collection of Roman-era limestone quarries were slowly and systematically being discovered, mapped, and stabilized in a process known as “the consolidation.” Below-ground uncertainty affected above-ground development - you never knew when you might start excavating for your dream house and hit a sinkhole caused by an improperly stabilized, long-forgotten tunnel. When large-scale development started above the 14th arrondisment, this “consolidation” became needed. The result is a comprehensive network of stabilized tunnels. To this day it’s overseen and maintained by the IGC (Inspection Générale des Carrières), the governmental agency that was charged with the task of the consolidation. Another result is the map the cataphiles use - which is essentially an updated and annotated version of one developed about 50 years ago by the IGC. Yet another result is yet more writing down in the tunnels.

Every time a tunnel was inspected, stabilized, and mapped, notes were carved on the wall. At minimum, they consisted of the year of inspection (I’m not sure what the 25 C is - it might be a date). Most of the time, the initials of the head engineer (here it’s “GG”) are also carved in. Here, “HT” is the chief engineer, while the ‘I5′ on the left signals the 5th general consolidation. The consolidation wasn’t a single process - several were done over the course of decades to make sure the underground of Paris was sufficiently stable. And as you can also see, most tunnels also have the name of the street they run under engraved on the walls.

On our last excursion with David we got one of those surprise glimpses into history that makes these kinds of trips so worthwhile. In a certain section of the catas, we started running into engravings that looked like this. David told us those were dates also - just using a different calendar: the French Revolutionary Calendar. This tunnel was inspected and consolidated on March 25th, 1805 - or the 4th of Germinal, 13th year of the Revolution. The *49 above and on the right means that we were directly underneath number 49 of the whatever block we were on - probably a large mansion that was a memorable street presence.

I wish we could say that we were happy to see the light of day after our 30 hour entombment - but unfortunately it was about 2:00 in the morning. Steve caught a cab, but I wanted to walk home. The route back to our hotel took me directly over the amazing area where we had spent the last day - I even passed by the entrance to the official tour. I didn’t need a map. My time spend figuring my way beneath Paris had somehow given me an almost instinctual sense of navigation and understanding of the city streets. I realized Paris had clicked for me - I completely understood the geography of the town. I might not have known all the shortcuts, but I knew I’d never really be lost again.

The moment when you realize you truly know something on a deeper level than before is an almost mystical experience. It’s one of those things that makes life worthwhile. My goal on this trip wasn’t to spend a certain amount of time underground or break into a certain amount of places or see a certain amount of interesting things. My goal was to get to know Paris. As I turned the corner onto my hotel’s street of Rue St. Jacques - where 24 hours ago I’d made the exact same turn 100 feet below - I realized I could leave Paris with no regrets.

Unless otherwise noted, all pictures are copyright of my friend, travel partner, and fellow guerilla urbanist Steve Duncan. Steve is a wonderful photographer, and specializes in underground and urban photography. Prints are available - visit his website at http://www.undercity.org

The more we saw of the catacombs, the more we wanted to see. Since we were told that there’s usually more people (and cops) on the weekends, we decided to take Saturday off and prep for a marathon trip. Our intention was to do 24 hours. We ended up doing 30. It seems like a long time, but it’s actually not that much - David spent over a week down there once as a teenager.

The catacombs are a constant 50 degrees Fahrenheit year-round, with about 98% humidity. The practical result of this climate is weird: you get really hot while you’re moving around - to the point wearing shorts and a t-shirt - but when you rest a while and cool down, you get pretty chilly. And if you’re trying to take a nap, it’s like the stone floor is sucking the heat right out of your body. Since a 24-hour trip entails sleeping, and I needed a sleeping bag anyway, we hit Aux Vieux Camper to pick up some gear. A couple hundred Euros later, we were off.

It didn’t start out so good - we tried to get to the abandoned tracks that led to the entrance a different way than usual. A few hours, a couple locked gates, and several confused passersby later, we decided to forget our bright idea, walk about a mile to the entrance we knew, and go from there. By the time we got down onto the tracks, it was dark already.

Still, we were determined to spend an entire day down there, and we were also determined to see as much as we could. The first thing on our list was the German Bunker, constructed during the Vichy Period. There’s also a French Resistance bunker in the catacombs - and both sides never found out the other was down there. That’s how big the catacombs are.

We couldn’t get into the French Resistance bunker - the entrances had all been sealed up by the IGC. Rosie told us that there had been a way in about a week ago, but it was filled up with concrete now. That’s the way the catas are: parts are sealed up by the IGC and (less often unfortunately) parts are opened back up by the cataphiles. For tourists like us, what we get to see is just pretty much just the luck of the draw.

The German Bunker happened to be open - but just barely. This was the only way in. I refused to make the place our bedroom - I couldn’t stop worrying about what would happen if the IGC decided to seal up the entrance during the night.

Near the German Bunker was a room strangely reminiscent of an old bathroom (the sink’s in the foreground and the toilet’s in the background) - and judging by the smell, the cataphiles use it for its original purpose. While the architecture was incredible, we understandably decided to not to sleep there either. We ended up bedding down (and freezing) in this humble sanctuary a little ways away.

The German Bunker is in the far north of the catacombs. The entrance we used was on the opposite end, about two miles directly south. And, to put it mildly, the structure of the catas is not such that you can just enter and walk straight on over to the other side. It took hours of studying the map and winding our way under the 14th arrondissement before we found it. This, in combination with our late start, made us pretty much ready to call it a day when we found the bunker, a little disappointed that we hadn’t seen more. Again though, our biggest frustration was simply the timing. Just a day before we arrived in Paris another entrance 10 minutes from the German bunker had been welded shut. The worst part about it was that it was also 2 blocks from our hotel. Ah well - international urban adventure’s not supposed to have the luxury of curbside check-in anyway.