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.

Tags: Below, Catacombs, France, Paris, Underground

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 28th, 2006 at 9:59 pm and is filed under Below. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.