Fabrizio de Gennaro
ISBN 9788897982982 Digital Index Publisher, Modena, 2013
FRENCH EDITION. BOOK ALSO AVAILABLE IN ITALIAN
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Histoire des souterrains secrets de Paris - From the Revolution to the Affair of the Cagoule is a guide to the forbidden undergrounds of Paris: the 300 kilometers of tunnels that wind in the depths of the City of Light, under the sewers and under the subway. The Catacombs of Paris: the ones that tourists are not allowed to go into.
Paris is best known and loved on the "surface". Generations of tourists have walked its streets and boulevards, visited its museums, admired its monuments. But beneath the city, beneath the sewers and beneath the subway lines themselves, another city is hidden.
Countless tunnels wind 15-25 meters deep, sometimes on two or three levels. Originally they were ancient stone quarries from which the materials for the construction of the city's countless monuments and buildings were extracted.
Today these underground passages offer the new and unexpected opportunity to discover an ancient and forgotten Paris. Because these galleries have been able to preserve traces and testimonies of the past history and of the many events that Paris has been the scene of throughout History. Traces that have disappeared from the surface.
Officially, you can only visit a very small part of these mysterious underground passages, located on the left bank, about 6 km long and which houses part of the city's ancient cemeteries: 6 million human remains. The rest of the tunnels are still used today by some adventurers who defy the prohibition and obstacles to enter, generally plates that cover the wells with bars to descend, often walled up or sealed.
In fact, it has always been forbidden to enter these galleries and walk through them. They were used to hide, escape or move around the city discreetly during all the "hot" periods in the history of Paris: since the French Revolution, during the Paris Commune and in all the troubled times.
They are mentioned several times in 19th century literature and most recently by Umberto Eco in "The Prague Cemetery". These undergrounds had a strategic importance even in more recent times when, in 1937, the Cagoule, an armed faction of the extreme right, attempted a little-known fascist coup; during the Second World War the Germans built anti-aircraft bunkers there while the Parisian Resistance used them as a headquarters during the Liberation; during the Cold War, the Government used them, without the knowledge of the general public, to build anti-atomic shelters under some public buildings.
From the first chapter of "Paris Underground"
What's underneath Paris?
T he history of man is full of living and preserved testimonies of the past, but these are necessarily destined to disappear: time and the objectives of society are projected towards the future. In this sense Paris appears different from the big cities that, growing, have had to clear away their ancient topography and often what was historically connected to it. Paris has forgotten, or rather, has been able to forget, its underground. The direction of growth has been upwards and downwards and only partially downwards. It has built new buildings and new monuments on top of the old ones, it has opened new boulevards between the old streets and it has built the subway at a relatively limited depth.
The lack of interest in the deepest layers of its subsoil has allowed them to be preserved, unlike what was on the surface, which has been completely transformed.
The deepest underground has thus served to cleanse the city of its ancient dead: since the 18th century over 6 million individuals have been transported to the underground and the dead of the various massacres that the history of Paris has produced have also found a discreet place, where they will not disturb public opinion: the anciens and nouveau régimes have thus tacitly found each other again.
These undergrounds have become the city's subconscious. A great moral and historical dustbin in which, together with the dead, the opposing extremisms are thrown so that they can be forgotten, abandoned and the living can move on. The underground has thus preserved traces of the past that only the attentive explorer can still read.
In the many tumultuous periods that Paris has experienced throughout its history, the galleries have often been the scene of illicit trafficking, the hiding place or the communication routes of sects and secret societies, deliberately or unconsciously protected by fear and popular superstition. The circumstances and their morphology have thus allowed these ancient limestone quarries to remain unchanged until today, giving us the unique and extraordinary possibility of deciphering and discovering something that is often inaccessible and completely elusive: history.
These mysterious galleries are however afflicted by a centuries-old disease: if for more than a thousand years the catacombs have been forgotten because they were relatively uninteresting, periodically a part of the galleries is drowned by concrete, essential to consolidate some new building that must be built on the surface. In the 80s the "Laser" project wanted by the then mayor of Paris, Chirac, was supposed to have the highway and the railway pass under the city at a depth that would have required the destruction of a large part of the ancient underground. That project was suspended, but the sword of Damocles of the development of modernity still hangs over the Catacombs of Paris.
In fact, the work of the Inspection Générale des Carrières continues. Each year, a part of the galleries disappears irremediably into the concrete. All this makes their visit, in addition to clandestine, increasingly difficult and adventurous.
The fact that access to the ancient underground stone quarries is strictly forbidden has prevented most people from studying them. No television crew , lecturer, historian, archaeologist, in short, practically no scholar is allowed to descend and travel the hundreds of kilometers of underground passages of the unofficial network of catacombs. Soon there will be nothing left but books, photos and clandestine filming to illustrate the undergrounds of Paris.
...continues
Paris Underground - History of the secret undergrounds of Paris
- What's underneath Paris
- The origin of the underground
- First historical episodes
- The Tombe-Issoire Fire
- The Val de Grace
- The Charterhouse of Paris: The Carthusian Monks' Underground
- A body snatcher in the catacombs
- Smuggling 1600 - 1815
- The Observatory 1667
- L'Inspection Générale des Carrières 1777
- Origin and transformation of the cemetery des Innocents
- The relocation of the Cimetière des Innocents 1786
- The French Revolution 1789
- The Revolution in the Underground
- Philibert Aispairt, in vino veritas?
- Details on some transfers in the Catacombs
- The End of the Napoleonic Empire: The Siege of Paris 1814
- The War of 1870 and the Paris Commune 1870-1871
- City fortifications
- Underground Terrors
- The Paris Commune and the Manhunt in the Catacombs 1871
- Unreleased tracks?
- The Cagoule 1937
- Birth of the CSAR (Secret Committee for Revolutionary Action)
- Objectives and methods of the Cagoule
- The Action: The Paris Coup
- The Cagoule in the underground
- The German occupation 1940-1944
- Air raid shelters and bunkers
- The Resistance 1940-1944
- The Battle of Paris August 1944
- Testimonies from the past
- The OAS and the Odeon Underground 1960-1961
- The anti-atomic shelter under the Ministry of Equipment
- The Cataphiles 1970-2010
- Why are they going down?
- Mysteries of the Underground Still Unsolved
- Hidden Treasures
- Cataphile phantoms?
- Under the Père Lachaise Cemetery
- V2 in the catacombs
- Literature and Cinema
- Bibliographical notes
- Conclusion
- APPENDIX
