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

When it’s three in the morning, the last time you’ve slept was 36 hours ago on another continent, you’ve just dug your way under a fence and climbed up a landmark in Central Paris, and now - in sub-zero weather - there’s a naked woman on top of a statue of a Seraph 10 feet away, it’s a little tough to explain how you got there. But I’ll try.

Paris is a city with an enormously interesting variety of urban history and layers. In addition to having some of the premier cultural, architectural, and historical attractions in the world, it also has one of the premier attractions for those interested in the urban underground - the 170 miles of limestone quarries dotted with WWII bunkers, ossuaries, unofficial art galleries, and other assorted surprises colloquially know as “The Catacombs.”

When events conspired to offer me a chance to go on an expedition to the Catacombs with my friend Steve (described above), I jumped at it. As almost all of the Catacombs are officially off-limits to the public, learning about the dangers and possibilities (as well as just how to get in) can be a problem, especially for foreigners. Luckily, we had two resources that helped tremendously: a small group of “Cataphiles,” led by someone whom Steve had once led around similar places in New York, and our friend Miru - who happened to be in Paris visiting one of the foremost experts on the Catacombs.

So Steve calls up our two contacts upon out arrival in Paris. We end up getting a surprise added bonus - turning away from the phone a bit, he asks me “so you wanna go climb a tower tonight?”

We end up meeting the Cataphiles at a restaurant in Central Paris. The leader of the group is an immaculately dressed young French woman who instantly earns the nickname “Rosie” from me for some reason - it might be because of the pink skull on her otherwise jet-black outfit. With her is Krisprolls, an artist and graffiti writer. We pick up Miru and a sixth person named Sarah at Krisprolls’ art collective 59 Rue de Rivoli a bit later, and head to the Tour St. Jacques.

The Tour St. Jacques is the only surviving part of a 16th century Gothic church, the rest of which was demolished in 1797. Nicolas Flamel was supposedly buried underneath its floor, and Blaise Pascal used it to conduct his experiments on atmospheric pressure (today it also houses a meteorological laboratory). It’s located inside a small park in the 4th arrondissement right in the middle of Paris - despite it being well past midnight, I have no idea how we’re going to pull this off without getting caught.

The first part is easy - somehow, Rosie’s got a key to the park, which is closed after dark. But there’s still the problem of getting past the 12-foot tall solid metal barriers that surround the actual tower. If it were just Steve and I, we could probably find a way over, but we have the added challenge of getting the other four folks across. After a bit of poking around, Rosie shows up out of nowhere with a shovel. Steve gets to digging. I am absolutely amazed that no passersby seem to find this a particularly noteworthy situation. Although it is really late, and we’re partially hidden by some bushes, if it were Midtown Manhattan instead of Central Paris we’d probably be in handcuffs by now. I guess for whatever reason Europe is just more chill about this kind of stuff.

After about 10 minutes, Steve has managed to create a hole under the barrier big enough for me to slip through. I take the shovel and clear out the other side a bit, so that it’s big enough for Krisprolls - who’s about 6′2″ - to get through as well. Everyone wiggles under, and we head to the tower.

The Tour St. Jacques is currently being inspected and restored, so we have the advantage of scaffolding, which makes the climb pretty easy. We make our way up, stepping over protruding gargoyles and stopping occasionally to admire the gothic detailing close up. But the real goal, as always, is the top.

Because of the scaffolding, we can get a close-up look at the 3-story tall statue on top that was added in the 19th Century. Despite the name of the Tower, it’s not actually a statue of St. John, but of his brother St. James. Rosie claims that if you look into his eyes you can tell he’s crazy, but I don’t really see it. I’m pretty much content to hang out admire the view from 150 feet above Central Paris while the other take photographs. The Notre Dame is pretty close by, as well as the Centre Pompidou, which contains the Musée national d’art moderne, the art museum that every Parisian I’ve talked to says is their favorite in Paris.

When Steve asks me to pose for a photo on top of this statue on the corner of the roof, I balk. A big factor in getting to climb the tower was the scaffolding. The scaffolding was erected at least partially to assist with the historic preservation of the tower. So I feel like anything that might interfere with the preservation of the sculptures - like sitting on them for instance - is kind of bad manners. Miru, on the other hand, has no such qualms. One of her current projects is the Naked City Spleen, and I guess this is just too good of an opportunity for her to pass up; niceties like historic preservation - or the fact that it’s absolutely freezing - can’t stand in the way of true artistic vision.

We head back down the tower through the interior spiral staircase, out a small passageway back on to the scaffolding, and out the same hole we came in. The gang decides to try and fill it back in. I know that we’d been seen climbing down the scaffolding, and all I can think of is the irony of getting caught at the end of this excursion filling up the hole we dug to get in. I can’t say I understand the point; I mean, does this look like anything other than someone trying (very badly) to cover up a hole that’s been dug? Still, 15 minutes later when we’re safe sipping tea at the art collective, I can forgive our new friends anything. It’s been the most wonderful welcome to a city that I’ve ever had.

Tags: Above, Catacombs, Climbing, Paris

This entry was posted on Monday, February 13th, 2006 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Above. 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.