rashka
04-04-2013, 05:12 AM
Ancient tunnels not opened to the public, but regularly visited by trespassing urban cavers called "cataphiles".
The miles of tunnels and catacombs underlying Paris are essentially former quarries, dating from Roman times, from which much of the stone was dug to build the city.
Today, visitors can take guided tours around a tightly restricted section, Les Catacombes, where the remains of up to six million Parisians were transferred from overcrowded cemeteries in the late 1700s.
But since 1955, for security reasons, it has been an offence to "penetrate into or circulate within" the rest of the network.
Nearly two decades ago, there were reportedly 300 accesses to the quarries. Most have been sealed, but new entryways are uncovered by enterprising explorers.
Asked how many accesses exist today, Rougerie, the police official, conceded: “There are those I know and those I don’t.”
While many Parisians go out on the town on Saturday evenings, a small but growing number go under it.
Beneath Paris lies a network of some 155 miles of tunnels known as "the catacombs"—an underground labyrinth that serves as the weekend playground for bands of urban explorers. One recent Saturday, several dozen "cataphiles," as these explorers are known, climbed down an embankment in south Paris to a unused railroad track. After a short walk, they disappear into a hole in the side of a railway tunnel to the catacombs, 65 feet below.
"The environment never changes down here," says Riff, 44, a catacombs veteran of 22 years who won't give his full name because he likes to explore areas off-limits to the public. "Many people come here, I think, because it gives them a milieu in which they can always know what will happen. It's constant."
The mines of paris: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_of_Paris
http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/paris-catacombs-entrance.jpg
http://static.bbci.co.uk/wwtravel/img/ic/608-342/13203573783134820159_1.jpg
The miles of tunnels and catacombs underlying Paris are essentially former quarries, dating from Roman times, from which much of the stone was dug to build the city.
Today, visitors can take guided tours around a tightly restricted section, Les Catacombes, where the remains of up to six million Parisians were transferred from overcrowded cemeteries in the late 1700s.
But since 1955, for security reasons, it has been an offence to "penetrate into or circulate within" the rest of the network.
Nearly two decades ago, there were reportedly 300 accesses to the quarries. Most have been sealed, but new entryways are uncovered by enterprising explorers.
Asked how many accesses exist today, Rougerie, the police official, conceded: “There are those I know and those I don’t.”
While many Parisians go out on the town on Saturday evenings, a small but growing number go under it.
Beneath Paris lies a network of some 155 miles of tunnels known as "the catacombs"—an underground labyrinth that serves as the weekend playground for bands of urban explorers. One recent Saturday, several dozen "cataphiles," as these explorers are known, climbed down an embankment in south Paris to a unused railroad track. After a short walk, they disappear into a hole in the side of a railway tunnel to the catacombs, 65 feet below.
"The environment never changes down here," says Riff, 44, a catacombs veteran of 22 years who won't give his full name because he likes to explore areas off-limits to the public. "Many people come here, I think, because it gives them a milieu in which they can always know what will happen. It's constant."
The mines of paris: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_of_Paris
http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/paris-catacombs-entrance.jpg
http://static.bbci.co.uk/wwtravel/img/ic/608-342/13203573783134820159_1.jpg