In the Abandoned Subways of Paris

May 27, 20245 min read

The following is a messy and hyperbolic outtake from a travel memoir I've been writing for the last several years. It didn't quite fit the overall story, but seemed like a vignette that could stand on its own in short form.

Everywhere I go, I find the tunnels. They fascinate me so much more than what’s above the ground. I seem to be at home in the underground.

I wish the old Belle Époque nightclubs were still around. Those dark temples of a fin de siècle in night mode. I could easily see myself as a dandy flâneur, sipping iridescent green spirits topped with dancing flame in places like Cabaret de l’Enfer and its counterpart, Cabaret du Ciel.

Mais, je digresse.

Paris seems full of tunnels. Eaten through in her bone-filled catacombs, in the winding staircases of Squat 59 Rivoli and the post-modern oddity known as Centre Pompidou, itself covered in tunnels made of plastic and metal. In Père Lachaise Cemetery, the mausoleums crowd together like phantom tollbooths that suggest the entrances of tunnels allowing visitors to pass through the veil of Samhain.

In Paris Above, there’s Palais Garnier, the grand opera house where the legend of another tunnel dweller was born. Gaston Leroux’s eponymous phantom is said to have lived under several flights of palatial marble staircases, on the shores of a subterranean lake. Whether or not the lake actually exists depends on who you ask and how much you’re willing to pay.

Before the Paris metro, a steam train ran under the inner parts of the city in a loop called Le Petite Ceinture. 'The little belt' in English. The line hasn’t been in service for almost a century, and even though some of the above-ground bits have been reimagined as parks and green spaces, there are still long stretches hidden in troughs and tunnels that cut through the inner arrondissements like doorways to a Neil Gaiman world like Paris Below.

Satellite photos help me find some of these derelict routes in the topographical tells at higher elevations. They hide in the shadows behind apartment blocks and industrial zones, and when what appears to be a faded grey embankment disappears into a hill of green grass in one of the old downtown neighborhoods, you can be sure this is an entrance to a tunnel on the old Petite Ceinture.

Trespassing on the abandoned line is generally forbidden but rarely enforced and I’m able to find an access point fairly easily. I follow the overgrown tracks for several blocks past a handful of station platforms that haven’t seen riders since the 1930s, covered in decades of graffiti and eaten by rust and vegetation. The door to one tiny office is open and the floor is littered with a mass of old tickets fused together with mildew and rat droppings.

I cross an unused trestle over a quiet street and a dozen LARPers in green capes, much less cautious than I am, walk up from behind and pass. Further along, a hapless series of mud ovens and torn couch cushions sit scattered along the rails among piles of empty liquor bottles and food wrappers. Signs of a secret society. Half-worlders, watching from the tunnels, maybe.

The old path enters a deep industrial valley between rows of buildings, covered in a veil of ivy like a vision from the end of civilization. At the far end, the tunnel I'd been chasing seems to whisper from behind the vines. The call of a void that I might be chasing as well. My foot hits an iron bar laying across the tracks and I pick it up to carry in with me.

The heat of early September gives way to the cold breath of the underworld. The city buzzes overhead but the sounds are muffled and indistinct, like being underwater. In the sudden absence of outside sound, my ears zero in on every drip of moisture from the ceiling, every crackle of gravel underfoot. Rats heard but not seen, their tiny hairless feet crunching on the gravel. Amplified and echoed.

The arc of daylight behind me extinguishes fully in a matter of a few railroad ties and swallows me in its emptiness. My eyes attempt to adjust to the dark and my mind tries to make sense of its formlessness. I wonder if it all connects somewhere - the opera lake, the catacombs, the mausoleums, the lost subways. A city of lost men.

The air is still, but each step forward is like walking headfirst into a silent wind. Shapes form in shadow and sounds form in silence. Is that the rail? Is that a door? An animal? A face? A twisted shopping cart sits across the rails and the LARPers seem to have disappeared, no doubt heading off to fight a balrog deep in the mines. Or perhaps returning home to upload their afternoon sparring to YouTube. The only thing I’m sure of is the ground beneath my shredded Vans.

Pressing ahead is like those dreams where you walk but can't seem to get anywhere and the first wisps of panic start to pool and eddy. I stop to hold my breath, listening for the underwater sounds of Paris Above. They're as far away as waking life from the depths of deep sleep, and the end of the tunnel seems further yet. I’ve reached what I thought would be the end of the darkness, only to see how much more of it is still ahead.

I wanted to see waterfalls, lost lakes, and secret demimonde libraries with cathedral ceilings, but instead I seem to have entered a world of urban blight and rat-borne pathogens. A lethal live wire or a possible mugging. Missed calls to family and a fruitless search and rescue. My bones joining the rest of the catacomb hordes in Paris Below.

Turning back brings relief. My legs unlock, release, quickening me out of Paris Below and back into Paris Above. I throw the steel rod to the side of the tracks at the entrance and the echo of its clang bounces back down the tunnel’s throat. The pinhole eyes of rats with hairless feet stare and blink. Maybe laughing at my cowardice.

The warm breath of summer returns with the sun and the familiar noises of living human beings in a living human city. On ne gagne pas à tous les coups, the tunnel whispers behind me. Maybe next time.

And I'll bring the LARPers and their protection spells with me.

{{Excluded excerpt from the forthcoming book The Last Tour.}}

Paris Above and Below ⬇️ 📷: Me.