Under Paris

Je viens de lire un article vraiment très intéressant dans le National Geographic de février 2011 intitulé Under Paris. Ici.

Sous la ville de Paris, se trouve des kilomètres de tunnels en tous genres, certains dont on ne soupçonne même pas l'existence. La majorité d'entre eux sont le résultat de carrières, littéralement souterraines. Les catacombes en sont.

Les photos ne sont pas exceptionnelles mais les graphiques oui.

À lire!

Voici un extrait:
Paris has a deeper and stranger connection to its underground than almost any city, and that underground is one of the richest. The arteries and intestines of Paris, the hundreds of miles of tunnels that make up some of the oldest and densest subway and sewer networks in the world, are just the start of it. Under Paris there are spaces of all kinds: canals and reservoirs, crypts and bank vaults, wine cellars transformed into nightclubs and galleries. Most surprising of all are the carrières—the old limestone quarries that fan out in a deep and intricate web under many neighborhoods, mostly in the southern part of the metropolis.

Into the 19th century those caverns and tunnels were mined for building stone. After that farmers raised mushrooms in them, at one point producing hundreds of tons a year. During World War II, French Resistance fighters—the underground—hid in some quarries; the Germans built bunkers in others. Today the tunnels are roamed by a different clandestine group, a loose and leaderless community whose members sometimes spend days and nights below the city. They're called cataphiles, people who love the Paris underground.