Catacombes de Paris : voyage au cœur du monde interdit 💀⛔ | Trésors du Patrimoine

Catacombes de Paris : voyage au cœur du monde interdit 💀⛔ | Trésors du Patrimoine

The Parisian basements were discovered
in the late 1970s, as part of a legal case
involving the theft of telephone cables. At the time, I was a senior inspector. I had a colleague with me who was
also a divisional inspector, who was passionate about caving. And it was on this occasion that we
discovered that these telephone cables which were running in the sewers,
for us, were also going elsewhere. And what were these
curious galleries under the sewers, in the earth, in the stone? So we inquired and were
told: These are the underground quarries. And
quickly, we realized that there were other problems that were caused
by these quarries, because when we went to the General Inspectorate
of Quarries, they told us: There is this, there is that, there is this, there is
that, judicial. So, we had the attitude of doing more or less
what we wanted in the judicial police. So we decided
to take an interest in this phenomenon. We began to investigate
and invest in the basements of Paris. And there, we realized that there was
a fairly large, substantial area that was being monitored by no one. Until then, it was of little interest. But the problem is that there was
a report on television. A report showing these famous
underground quarries and making young Parisians realize that they had
beneath their feet a land of extraordinary adventure. And then things got better. We had a lot of problems,
we had accidents, we had people who got lost. And so, it had to be dealt with. Taking care of it was simple. Or we saw it in an
essentially repressive light. It’s a bit like a font. Finally, we went down there,
stopped people who were walking around, gave them a
ticket and took them to the military station. It wasn’t the house style. We wanted to know what these people were
doing there, who they were, why they were coming down, to find out their motivations. So, that’s what we did,
that’s what we chose, with the blessing of the prefect, moreover. And so
we got to know these people who went underground,
who called themselves cataphiles. So they always washed us
for the little cataflic, catafile, cataflic story,
we were made for each other. They were descended from an absolutely
incredible population down there. It ranged from the priest to the lawyer. There were all
layers of the population. On the other hand, we had a preeminence
in the student environment and quite quickly, we had a good knowledge
of both the network of these famous careers, but at the same time
of the people who went down there. And the relationships we had with these
people were ambiguous. It wasn’t, I’ll be
trivial, a relationship between the cop and the offender. No, there was something else. There was a kind of cement that united us. I remember my first descent,
it was under rue Pinel, in the 13th arrondissement. So I discovered this,
I said: Holy shit, is this under Paris? And I knew it.
Or not. What you feel when you descend
into this environment is, first of all, a great peace. You are confronted, daily,
with murders, rapes, abominable things that
make you want to vomit. And suddenly you come down
there, there’s silence. You’re not bothered by a bridge,
an ambulance, anything. It’s silence. I tell you, it’s a fantastic place
where when you rest, you sit along the wall,
you hear your heart beating. It’s not common, though. I know it cleared my head. It washed my head,
it rinsed my head. The dangers in these famous
quarries were of several kinds. There were health risks,
some of them, because illegal attendance left
garbage inside. And the garbage brought rats. Rats have the unfortunate habit
of carrying a disease called leptospirosis. So when we came across young people
inside, we told them: Be careful. There are health risks. You can catch
any disease. You risk getting hurt. There was a young man who was a
polytechnician, who had passed his competitive exam. He celebrated in the Catacombs
and had a very, very bad fall down a service shaft. He broke his spine, etc. And when it was shown on television,
I think it was the bicentenary of the École Polytechnique, we see
a polytechnician in a wheelchair, that’s him. He still managed to get into
polytechnic school, but unfortunately… And then, you risk being attacked there
too because there were people who went there with
motives that were n’t exactly nice. And we had people who got
lost in the quarries. So it ranges from a few hours to much longer. So, quite quickly,
we put in place a kind of ecological method to be able to
search these quarries. So, in this collection,
I have access to quarries, whether they are service shafts
without steps, service shafts with steps or stairs. This allowed us to have a
database that could help us and guide us when we
needed to intervene in a location. How many people are needed?
It varies. It varies. If we launch a plan,
how shall I say, at a minimum, it requires 78 people. So, I was so loved by
the cataphiles that when I went on retreat,
there was a whole group of cataphiles who decided to have a party,
an indoor party. Of course, we looked at her
with a benevolent eye. I was invited with some colleagues,
and the theme was chicken with almonds and chicken… Not chicken with vinegar,
but something… So it was fun, we
actually showed up at the appointed time. And there, we arrived in this immense
quarry in the 15th arrondissement, where there were a certain
number of people, I think at least 150 or 200 who were there. We had a bite to eat,
we chatted, we had a drink. And then, that was the end of my career.
And it was nice. My last descent into the Catacombs
was the catapoulet. And I swore to myself that I would
never come back down. Then, I can’t see myself being
checked by the police inside. Ridiculous, ridiculous, ridiculous. Now, my passions draw
me more towards the sea. I went down into the
quarries under Paris in 1981. For my first descent,
we had no plan and at that time, I was also drawing the big picture,
the path we were taking. There was no plan available. We also decided
to leave traces on the walls at each intersection to help us find each other. But since we didn’t want to get dirty,
we used wall-colored chalk and we never found our marks again. Luckily I had
the drawing to pull out. And it was… I was infected for a long time. My name is Philippe,
but in the quarries, cataphiles call me diver,
quite simply because I started diving underground in the quarries
under Paris to explore the beginnings of submerged galleries which were marked
nowhere, which were not known and which I mapped on this occasion. I started cave diving in
1987 and in 1987 I was in the 13th arrondissement going down into a well and discovering
a completely submerged gallery. When we are underground, diving,
nothing should happen to us. Or at least, if something happens to us
, we must be able to sort everything out immediately and on our own. So, several bottles,
several regulators like an airplane, everything is doubled, tripled, so that we
can resolve problems at any time. The exit will always be
where we entered. The dive cannot be interrupted at another location. So, it will take at least
longer to get out than to come in,
because the water will be less clear. And so, we absolutely need to have
much more air to go out than to go in, to ensure safety
in the event of a breakdown, in the event of loss, in the event of a problem. What made me want to go
under Paris and dive under Paris is what has driven my life for more
than 40 years: exploration, discovery, knowing what is
elsewhere, further away, ahead. There was a well, water
and I saw the start of a gallery. I can’t stay
without going to see what’s there. I compare cave diving
to the geographer who went to explore the world in the 15th and 16th centuries. It’s about going to see what’s there and, above all,
bringing this knowledge back to everyone , sharing it. One
of the peculiarities of cave diving is that
we leave behind a trail of Ariadne. Ariadne’s thread is the one that will
allow us, with certainty, to find the exit. He has many other roles. Ariadne’s thread will
also allow us to map out. We take advantage of the distance marked
on the Ariadne’s thread to be able to make the map of the cave. Without Ariadne’s thread, we cannot
speak of an underground point of view. It is not possible to go underground, to explore without bringing back a topography. So there isn’t a single place I
‘ve been that I don’t have a photographed map of. I gave the plans for the galleries under Paris
to the General Inspection of Quarries. They were not reported on the maps. On the other hand,
they were published by Gilles Thomas in his atlas of underground quarries. When I am in different cities. I always give my plans for free
to the authorities who will use them or not. Very, very often,
this will help bring fresh water or protect
fresh water sources for residents. I discovered about 400 meters
of galleries and flooded rooms. So, the galleries I discovered have
not been visited since they were dug. So, these are things
that go back three centuries. So, unfortunately, we have places
that are drowning today and which are quite visible on the maps. Atlantis, near Avenue
du Général de Leclerc. And today it’s even worse, since
these drowned parts no longer exist. They were completely injected
by a building, a cinema. And to ensure the foundations,
they injected underground, without saying so, and no one noticed
because it was underwater. And now, under 5 cm of water,
we find concrete, whereas there were galleries where we
could dive and see traces of the past. In Paris, it is above all the
historical aspect which is predominant for me. We are under the plan of the city
before Baron Haussmann. We are immersed in the memory of the city. We are in consolidations which date back to
the kings of France, then later to the engineers. It allows you to discover the city from
another perspective, to discover that parts of the city that have been
built, we know where the stone comes from, to be able to connect everything together. It gives a fuller sense
of where we live. And then, clearly,
Paris, which is the most beautiful city in the world, is not there for nothing. Paris is Paris because at the base,
there was clay, there was sand, there was limestone which allowed from
the start to create an immortal city, a city which did not burn. It is the only capital city in
the world that has never burned down. It was an environment that was
timeless and beyond convention. It didn’t matter what the people were like
underground. We weren’t someone,
we were a cataphile. Today, it’s a little less so with
Instagram, outdoor life has gone underground. So the career world has changed. The people you
meet there have changed a lot. Fortunately,
we still meet fascinating, exciting people that we would
never have met elsewhere. The quarry environment, under Paris,
is a self-managed environment, so we clean it up. A decatacline
is an operation that is carried out from time to time to
massively clean the network. But the communication about the fact that we
clean means that today we have visitors who leave their
dirt so that we can clean it. So, the basic rule
is always to bring back a little more trash than you
have to carry with you. And so the network
remains more or less clean, because it compensates for those who do nothing. We are in a natural environment
which allows us to have a real difference compared to a city
which is moving faster and faster. The holds, under Paris,
it’s a slow rhythm. It’s a bit like a bubble of nature
in a concrete environment. I was looking on the internet for
inspiration where I could mix a whole bunch of very different places. And then I came across
a role-playing game, Elite. I quickly skimmed a page
that roughly described the city and thought: This is the Elite.
I’m going to be elite. And I liked the Elite because, in
reality, it’s a city where anything can be done. It can exist anywhere. It mixes gods, religions,
origins, and extremely varied characters. And in fact, in the Ekata, we have this,
a variety of people, of obedience, of extremely different visions of life. So, I did my elite and what
mattered in the elite was above all
the port to have this lighthouse, this lighthouse which illuminates and which attracts people. And I absolutely wanted it to be
Pointe Saint-Mathieu, near Brest, a place that was close to my heart,
with the Abbey of Saint-Mathieu. This is truly
the origin of the city. Afterwards, around this sacred city,
the terrace of the Temple, I built the covered market,
I built the causeway of the lake, the temple of the Dragons, the great staircase. In fact, I didn’t make the elite,
the elite made me. I came to build two or
three little things and then I wasn’t satisfied. I came back and I came back and I
always had the elite asking me to build one more room,
one more piece. And every time someone came to
break the elite because there was a lot of destruction in ten years, well,
every time, I rebuilt the damaged part and I enlarged the city. We have the impression that the city
always wants to grow. Every battle makes her
stronger and she moves forward. The day I arrived,
when we had all that stuff lying on the ground, the lighthouse was swinging over the city. I did it again once and came
back and it was broken again. I rebuilt them in mortar. There is no question
of the barbarians winning. So every time we pushed them back,
it all got a lot more solid. So, since the city is on the waterfront
and there are a lot of visitors, they put in some I dug sewers. There are holes everywhere
so that everything dries very quickly and the city is not damaged. Pilgrims who have completed the crossing
will often be ill and in the lazaretto, the hospital,
they will be able to be treated, in particular with this source. This is a sacred source. And simply
bathing in it allows you to be healed. And we see that the water
is perfectly pure and clear, whereas all around in the city,
the water is muddy. Aelitz is a large
port city on Lake Altalit. Pilgrims arrive from the
lake causeway and will be able to show up in the temple grounds. They will
calmly and serenely climb the 82 steps and the seven doors which will take them through
spiritual states which will lead them to the temple of the god of
the four elements which dominates the city and which welcomes them. It is the pyramid on the edge of the Great Lake
of Altalit, which is directed with the axes north, south,
east, west, perfectly of the climb, it is 365 steps, 364 exactly,
plus the large platform which makes the 365th step,
to have sacred numbers. We have the seven floors. This pyramid is
Itchenitza, in Yucatan. The Yucatan is a region of the world
where I have been exploring cave diving for about 15 years. I explored 40 kilometers
of flooded galleries. This world where I know black sorcerers,
white sorcerers, so white magic, black magic, Maya. We talked a lot with them before
the Mayan World Foundation and I wanted to have a little echo in Paris
of this group that spoke to me. This place, at the beginning,
was just an illustration. And then, little by little,
it became much more important. It has become a place
I like to go. I worked hundreds
and hundreds of hours on it. It’s a place that is inspired by a
place where I lived, that I visited. But there is also
a place which is a retirement home where my parents ended their lives. And for example, in 2017,
for the death of my mother, I came to put candles
and in fact, cataphiles left lights lit for more than a month
for the death of mom. So it’s kind of
a family hotel now. And it’s something that’s good
to have a community that actually wants to share something too. Our group, the OVE, we’ve been going
down since the end of the 80s. At the beginning,
our team wasn’t the OVE,
it was the stone eaters. There were five of us friends. As we went down,
we met other people. And then we started having fun with
smoke bombs for several reasons. The first was that
if the police were there, we could throw smoke bombs
and since their security regulations did not allow them to pass
through the smoke bombs, this allowed us to escape. And then it became a game. We started to smoke out friends. We also used it to smoke out
people who were coming down, who we did n’t really want to come down. In our team, there was Flagada,
a friend of ours, who had, among other things, brought back the
magic formula for homemade manure. And he unfortunately passed away
a few years ago. And since back then, when we were young,
we often found ourselves in this place, we decided to create
a room in his honor here. We were the only ones using
smoke bombs at the time. And so, we came up with the name
OVE, we’ll give you a smoke. And that’s how it went. And it must be said that this allowed us
to protect ourselves from aggressive people at the start, without violence. We can come across skills. I have come across
skills. Guys with blue, white, red flags, colossal
figures like that, bent in two in the gallery, you don’t lead the money. There were several teams of veterans
when we started, including a large team where they were
and still are at least royalists, or at least far-right,
to say the least. And so we, 17, 18 year olds,
I weighed 25 kilos fully clothed. Yes, smoke bombs were one of the first
ways to protect ourselves from this kind of people. He
saw his four-month-old baby, and then afterward, several people
joined this group, people who were part of other teams. The guys liked the smokes. The guys liked the smokers,
who liked to throw with us, people from the Waf, friends,
a group called the Wears Fantastiques, other people, Flagada, etc. Zorglub, Smoker, Kister, etc. So people from different groups
came together in this group and we became a big group of friends. And then, 30 years later,
the group still exists. We smoke less of it, but the name has remained. Sand of the Capetons! Are you ready? The smoking machine, on the edge! It was a party we were organizing for our 30th anniversary and it was at Célier,
in the south of the network. Yeah, we come to the We erase all our films, we erase all the galleries behind
us, we redraw the walls while singing like crazy, wondering
if we stress you out or piss you off. In terms of graffiti,
the most important group of catas is the FC, the connard frottes. They are called that because one day,
several graffiti artists joined forces to repaint the walls
of a small square room. They painted all the walls
like a cannabis field. And some people didn’t like it, they
came and rubbed everything. The unspoken rule,
but one that people respect, is not to tag street signs. This is where there are immaculate working faces
, not to tag on them so that it stays that way. Well, let’s be honest,
there are exceptions. There are times when we do
whatever we want, it happens. So there, in fact, it’s all
along the face. There are lots of signatures and drawings. And there, in this case,
we see a Prussian soldier and a soldier There, we suppose, Christian with his cross. And it would probably date back to
the war with Prussia in 1070. And to protect, we made a wave. The wall in front of it so
people don’t get close. And it’s worked well
so far. The first descent, I was told
I was going to a party in a cellar. So, like me,
I was well dressed, etc. And the cellars
became catacombs. This gentleman was waiting for us,
so he first told me to someone else . Instead of having a party,
I walked for hours in the water, etc. I discovered the catacombs. I was really into roleplaying
at the time and found a great roleplaying universe. I was in a
live role-playing game. Plus, I was a witchcraft fanatic. I liked looking at
witchcraft books, etc. Hence my nickname. When I learned that there were
pseudonyms in the catas, I said: There is a wizard in the cata com.
They told me: No. I said: OK, I’ll take it. And when I came out,
I said: You can take me back. He said to me: OK, but if you come back tomorrow. I climbed the wall and the next day
I was there, I had taken a three-hour train ride, I was at the entrance to the catas. I was 17 years old.
17 years old, yes. And after that, it never left me.
It became a passion. It’s fascinating because there’s the secret, there’s
the story, there’s the fact of being free. It’s a word you’ll find
among many cataphiles. Freedom.
There is no more telephone. Some basic rules that are
still fairly respected, but were much
more so in the 90s. There was a principle of: We don’t talk
about religion, we don’t talk about politics, we never give our real names, we
don’t say what we do for a living. Which was for social equality. And then, to avoid problems. Because as soon as we talk about politics,
religion, we weren’t there for that. No one was there for that. So we all decided we would
n’t talk about it. And indeed, as a result,
there are people that I have been seeing for 20, 30 years. I never knew their names,
I never knew what they did for a living, and we don’t care at all. And when we see each other,
we say: Ah, are you okay? We’ve known each other for years. We drink a beer together, we chat. And in fact, it
never occurs to us to ask,
what do you do for a living? Today I’m going to leave some leaflets. Leaflets have been a tradition in
the cata’ for decades. At first, it was a little
bit to announce parties. You should know that at the time, there were
no cell phones, no computers, etc. So, if you wanted to get information
in the catastrophes, you had to leave leaflets to give it and then
find leaflets to receive it. It can be drawings, insults, news, delusions, photos, whatever you want. Today I’m going to leave that one out. So,
it’s more of a passing signature to say hello to friends. And then it’s
a bit of a trace of our passage. There, I’m going to leave a few
everywhere during our walk, hiding them in the cracks.
In the stuff. And then there you go, anyone will find it and
say: Hey, what is it? Who is it ?
Who came by? So. So, for example, this one,
I don’t know, I’ll leave it. You see? Behind there. So. This one is going to be hard
to track. Hop, hop, and there you go. So there, we can put some
in the lower galleries. In fact, we are in a place
where there are several levels. It is one of the only ones in the catacombs. Is that it? Is this the last one open?
Yeah. I remove the stones that hide
the cathole and we will put them back later. It leads to an ossuary. When they emptied the
Parisian cemeteries at the end of the 18th century, they threw
the bones down wells, and so there are places where there are bones
in bulk in galleries. That’s why we put windshields,
to prevent it from being too visible.
This is not a party place. I think I’ll be
categorized my whole life. So after that, it’s our life
outside, of course. We don’t have the same life
at 50 as we do at 18 or 17. That’s obvious. So, kids, stuff,
work life and then health. Before, I was going back and
forth on the network. I walked all night,
or I ran all night. Now I can’t do it much anymore. Same, I think
I’ll stop doing disasters when I can’t go anymore. Whatever the reason,
health or distance. But it’s part of my life. And besides,
when I lived in the provinces, I found careers
and I hired everyone. Welcome to the quarries
and voids of the 13th arrondissement. I’m taking you to discover a
specific population that we’re going to discover together. I’m taking you to a dead end that doesn’t look like much, but it’s actually quite good
and it’s home to a very special population that I’m going to introduce to you. We discovered this population
of zonitoides arborius, for its nickname,
with my colleague CAFCA, about a year,
a year and three months ago, on an Ascension Thursday,
when we were here for biospeleological investigations. And by making this station, what we
call a station, it’s a place where we go to look for
critters, we started to find these snails and we made
this great discovery. They are small snails,
you don’t see them at first glance. And the first question was:
But where do these snails come from? And why? Because these snails correspond
to a species which is native to the United States and which, in France, is
only present in a few small localities in this area. We can therefore assume
that the wood comes from the United States, was used here for the formwork
of the dam of this gallery and that on trunks,
on pieces of plank, there are small species of snails
that traveled from the United States. They arrived here. They found the
environmental conditions favorable to develop. And so, there is
a very nice population. My name is Quentin,
I am currently doing my PhD. I am a naturalist and as part of my
thesis, I am a specialist in snails. And underground, they call me Geo,
Geo finds everything. After my first Decembers,
I met a colleague and comrade, Kafka, who introduced me to a discipline
called biospeleology, which aims to study all
cave-dwelling organisms. And with Kafka,
I was able to develop research to inventory the different
organisms of underground biodiversity. So, in the quarry,
we mainly have invertebrates. Among the vertebrates, there will be some
mammals, rats, bats. Or amphibians like
salamanders, newts. Otherwise, we will have myriapods,
mypads, arachnids, spiders,
affiliated groups, mites , these are arachnids. We can also have colambolas. Colambolas are
tiny insects that live in soil. We also have shellfish. Behind crustaceans,
I’m talking about what we call isopods, woodlice,
but also aquatic crustaceans, so small shrimps
that live in the water. There are also many
other organizations. In 2019, we presented a poster at a snail
science conference at the Museum of London. So that was the first data,
our first results. It was recognized. We had, in inverted commas,
relative success because when we arrived in London with that, we were
the French guys in the shadows. So, we were playing a little on the new,
but we’re getting used to it. It is also
important to consider that this is underground science, especially since it is literally and
figuratively speaking, which makes it difficult to access. And this is data that was
collected outside the law. But
we consider it more important to collect data for science
and for knowledge of the underground biological heritage. So, we collect it anyway. I remember my first descent. I was going down with a friend
from university who had gone down twice and who was supposed to meet a friend of his
in the area where we were supposed to go down and who did not find him. So we found ourselves
on the plane, on the surface. And in fact, at that moment,
I saw footprints with mud that we followed and which disappeared
under a plate. And we went down like that all night. In fact, it was a turning point in
that I really wondered why I had n’t discovered this
unique environment before. And that made me want to come back down,
which I did in the weeks that followed. What
is quite fascinating and very interesting, underground,
is that the sensory perceptions are very different. The noise is much lower
if we don’t bring it with us. The smells are very, very,
very different and above all, there is little light. This means that in an urban space such
as the city of Paris, where daily stimulation is extremely strong,
there is a very strong calming effect when you find yourself underground, because suddenly
you are cut off from a lot of sensory stimulation and it also allows you to
refocus on yourself, to refocus on others. It’s something that we don’t
necessarily notice when we go down, but rather when we go up. Because when you come back up,
you are hit in the head, so to speak,
by all these sensory stimulations and you really wonder where you have landed
when you have just come from underground. There are cataphiles who come from
all over the world. Already, with the opening of the Internet,
there is a lot of information available online and that allows
the penetration into this environment by people who do not know at all. And then there is a certain
popularity of this singular environment. And then also, with the Internet,
we have seen for several years the significant development of what we
call urbex, urban exploration. So, it’s not just snails
that come from far away. The difference is that snails,
having come from far away, have had a bit of a hard time. A cataphile is never truly lost. He wanders off, but it
never lasts very long. Well, what is quite interesting,
and here I refer to Robinson Crusoe, when he comes to the bottom of his cave to take
refuge, there is something very uterine in this search for oneself,
in a way this search for the underground. It is also perhaps a form
of archaeology of the soul and an archaeology of the mind. Afterwards, obviously, that is
a very personal point of view and I know that
not everyone necessarily shares it. There is still much
to discover beneath Paris, as not everything is necessarily accessible,
as we do not yet know all the underground organisms. But I also think that beneath Paris,
there are still many things to discover about oneself. I am one of the founders
of the Ocra association. I was its first president. My nickname, which I took
30 years ago, Metator Lucernarius. If from Latin, it means
the traveler who carries a lamp. Ocra is a dream we
had about thirty years ago. It was to allow
the cataphiles to defend what was their paradise,
in a way, that is to say the underground quarries,
in particular the underground quarries of Paris. But not only that.
It can also be other careers. It so happens that since the year 2000,
so for 20 years, thanks to the town hall of Yvry-sur-Seine,
we have been taking care of a quarry, we are developing it, we are carrying out work inside to be able to
show it to the public and to uncover the
heritage elements that are there. Yeah, well you see 1.40 meters. There, that’s what we said,
we weren’t too bad. I’m going to get a little closer,
but we’re good. No, it’s okay, we were saying a little more. What is a cataphile? Well, it’s like a human,
there are 10 percent of people who are super good, 10 percent who are complete morons,
and then 80 percent who swing between one and the other. What is interesting about the
cataphile world is that you can meet people there that you would not have the opportunity
to meet in everyday life. I met people who were
homeless, and they were career princes
because they knew the place. So if you know the place
without looking at a map of a prince. And so he went down a lot because
it’s a way to get fed. And they were princes, princes. While on the street, it was nothing. It’s also that magic. And what’s more, it’s forbidden. So there, we have the right to be here. The Yvry town hall gave us
permission, but in the 14th arrondissement, we don’t have the right. And so, there is this little side
of the forbidden that we are illegal immigrants. I do n’t know, since the Neolithic period, people have been fascinated by caves. They were going to put little
drawings on it, even their hands. Today, there are some who put their
tags, it’s the same, it’s like their hands. What attracts humans?
I don’t know. Maybe if I knew,
I would go down more, I don’t know. I know that 30 years ago,
when I was going downhill a lot, a descent was
like a week’s vacation. It happened to me after a good walk
in the night, when I woke up. I had seen the Virgin, what. I don’t know why. Honestly, I don’t know why. There’s something in the air. I don’t know, I don’t know anything. But it’s beautiful. That’s
why there are people who bother with shovels, wheelbarrows,
pickaxes to try to arrange things to show others. At first, there
were no girls in Ukraine, but that was because there were
n’t many of them in the quarries. And little by little, we saw some great girls,
they’re good, the cataphys. Indeed, there are more and more
women going underground, whether in GRS circles
or even in quarries, other than in Paris. And more and more women are
going down alone too. And so, suddenly, it’s something that,
I think, is very positive, since there should be no
difference between a woman or a man underground. Because underground,
we are all basically equal. We don’t ask ourselves 10,000 There
is much less separation. And so, I think it’s a good
thing that we’re also investing in the underground, that’s it, that women
can invest in the underground. It’s important to raise awareness about the
underground world because it’s a world that is often forgotten. Quite simply because we don’t see it
, because it’s invisible, because to get there you need
a lamp and often you need maps. And so, we don’t realize all
the richness, whether it’s human or historical. And in terms of biodiversity too,
it’s something that is very rich as an environment. So yes, it’s important to raise awareness among
the public, to remind them that there’s more than just the surface,
that there’s also a lot going on beneath our feet.
Since its creation, Lecrain has participated in several actions to safeguard
underground quarries. And currently, we are trying to defend
the quarries on Rodin Hill in Meudon. So no one protects this heritage. You might think that the
General Inspection of Careers is there for that. But no, the General Inspection
of Quarries is there to protect the surface. And that is why it has been making
reinforcements since 1777. And it’s not to make careers
prettier, it’s to reinforce the opposite. Of course, the people from the
General Inspection of Quarries know that it is a heritage, but they have orders. They don’t decide. The general inspection of quarries
is a sub-directorate of roads. It’s not.
So, if there aren’t passionate people who want to defend these underground passages,
they will disappear. That’s why it’s
important that there is a replacement. Speaking of young people,
when I see the energy they have, I feel 30 years younger. I remember that I too
had that energy. And when
I see everything we’ve been able to do over the past 30 years, I tell myself that they’ll continue to
do just as well, perhaps better. And so, there is still hope
for the underground quarry.

À quelques mètres sous vos pas, un autre Paris s’étend : silencieux, obscur, immense.

Amoureux de la France et du patrimoine, ses trésors n’auront plus de secrets pour vous 👉https://bit.ly/4dnI1h1

Des galeries oubliées, des carrières creusées sous l’Ancien Régime, des murs couverts de graffitis, d’ossements, d’histoires interdites.
Un monde parallèle où se croisent urbexeurs, spéléologues, poètes, chercheurs, cataphiles, et parfois… l’inattendu.

🎒 Nés dans les années 80, les cataphiles ont créé un code, une communauté, presque une civilisation souterraine.
💀 Entre ossuaires, rituels, art mural et exploration, ils ont construit un Paris que la surface ignore.
🌊 Certains plongent dans des galeries noyées pour en cartographier chaque mètre, comme des navigateurs de l’impossible.

Mais les sous-sols sont aussi un espace de résistance, de mémoire et de dangers :
➡️ risques sanitaires, isolement, effondrements, zones interdites, faune souterraine insoupçonnée.
➡️ Pourtant, c’est ici que l’on entend battre le cœur d’une ville qu’on croyait connaître.

🎥 Ce documentaire rare dévoile 40 ans de passion, de transmission, de luttes discrètes pour la préservation du patrimoine invisible de Paris.

👉 Regardez. Entrez. Ressentez.
Sous la pierre, il y a une histoire.
Et cette histoire continue de s’écrire.

© Tout droits réservés – AMP

#catacombs #catacomb #catacombsofparis #urbex #urbex93 #urbex91
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