Underneath All the Sophistication Lurks the Darker, Unexplored Paris

Every traveler, it seems, packs a trunk load of Parisian memories. Even that rare individual who has never strolled down the Champs Elysees, or eaten a chestnut crepe in the Latin Quarter, still rhapsodizes the city’s lambent beauty. But underneath Paris’ familiar gloss, something gritty lurks; the city conceals an elusive, unexplored quality. Call it the other side. Call it the underside.

Though “Paris underground” sounds like some revived anti-war movement, it is the city’s alter ego, an architectural “Mr. Hyde” of misty alleys, canals, pneumatic tubes and scabrous art. More and more tourists, desiring a complete Paris history lesson, are descending below the city’s frothy surface, first to the subway, then the catacombs and finally into the sewers themselves. Others are submerging at various points around the city into museums, crypts and below-ground shopping areas.

Subterranean Paris is a climate-controlled maze of communication, commerce and humanity that pulsates independent of the snarled traffic and human gridlock above. With walls of sand-blasted gypsum, calcium, sand and travertine marble, the city’s basement contains roads (underneath the Beaubourg, officially named the Pompidou Centre), languid canals (St. Martin’s Canal), reservoirs (around Montmartre) and a warren of 50,000 parking spaces.

As for bustling business, there is “Les Halles,” the five-story underground implosion of boutiques, restaurants, museums, movie theaters and a swimming pool near Notre Dame.

Paris’ cellar is also paved in literary history.

Legend has it that Balzac fled his creditors by ducking into the cellars underneath what was once the Passy abbey but is now several office buildings in the 16th arrondissement .

Gaston Leroux’s “Phantom of the Opera” hatched his devilish schemes from the underground lake of the Paris Opera. Today, lacking a phantom, a series of reservoirs under the Opera act as a natural air conditioner. Sadly, neither Balzac’s nor the Phantom’s underground escapes can be explored by tourists.

The first layer of Paris’ not-so-seedy underbelly is the subway. Le Metro’s efficiency has always been a source of pride for Parisians, and now it is an outlet for business and art. In nearly every one of the network’s 368 stations, reachable by stairs from the street, telephone-booth-size offices have been transformed into flea-market stalls selling posters (James Dean and Mickey Rourke are big favorites), jewelry, books, candy, coconuts and Kleenex.

The RATP, Paris’ enterprising mass transit authority, has transformed many of the serpentine hallways in the larger subway stations (“Chatelet,” “Les Invalides,” “Gare de Lyon”) into New Wave concert halls, dance stages and painters’ canvasses. From Cubist mosaics at the Bobigny-Pablo Picasso station, Monet rip-offs at the Saint Michel-Notre Dame stop, to New York-style graffiti everywhere, high and low art is honored for the price of a subway ticket.

Some subway stations rival the above-ground museums they serve. At the Louvre stop, replicas of a number of the museum’s great works--notably from the sprawling Egyptian, Greek and Oriental collections--are tucked into niches of finely sanded granite.

Below the subway lies the Catacombs, the kind of compelling and shadowy slice of Paris made to order for former “Twin Peaks” fans. Near the Denfert-Rochereau subway stop, south of the Montparnasse Tower, for example, the Catacombs fan out under several city blocks. A staircase, twisting downward like a drill bit, takes visitors on a five-minute, 161-foot descent underground and into the catacombs.

The catacombs were born in about 1785, when the city began converting some of the 350 underground rock quarries at the base of Paris’ three “mountains” (Montparnasse, Montrouge and Montsouris) into places to stockpile the remains of Paris’ dearly departed.

The Catacombs passageways are narrow--about three feet across--and illuminated by electrical lamps located every 20 feet. Overhead runs a thick black line, like some geological racing stripe, caked by smoke from oil lanterns that were used in the past. On occasion, the head must dip to accommodate a stony ceiling, wet with condensation, which sinks to just six feet. But the headroom increases as the quarry widens.

The special section called the bone gallery, or ossuary, is the lugubrious thrill of scheduled tours of the catacombs.

“Arret, c’est ici l’empire de la mort. Un peu de respect . “ (“Stop, here is death’s empire. A little respect.”) It’s a Dantean warning to all those entering the several rooms that are piled high with bones. If you have a bone to pick, the Catacombs serves up 1 1/2 miles of mottled skulls reposing on crossing tibias (some piles standing 30 yards thick). The Parisians, ever fastidious about symmetry, have arranged the crossed tibias as struts to support rows of skulls. This orderliness, strange as it may sound, creates an eerie serenity.

A 10-minute subway ride from the Catacombs stands sun-dappled Notre Dame cathedral. Virtually overlooked by the throngs of tourists walking on the cathedral’s esplanade is the entrance to its archeological crypt, an excavation of 1st Century BC streets, houses and shops that had been buried by later development.

The archeological findings tucked below Notre Dame’s front porch were first excavated in 1965 and opened to the public in 1980. Measuring 397 feet in length, Notre Dame’s crypt reveals a cross section of daily life where houses stood cheek-by-jowl with hospitals, ports, markets and wells.

The crypt’s main attraction is the reconstruction of a portion of Ile de la Cite, the island on which Notre Dame stands and the hub of Paris.

Comprising roughly four city blocks in front of the cathedral and reflecting 2,000 years of history, the crypt intersects wells, arcaded walls, aqueducts, caves, columns, ramparts and sewers.

One sees the cruel changes wrought by architectural progress as the last remains of a 15th-Century chapel are crushed underneath a drainage system implanted in 1802. Yet time has not eroded the geometric perfection of floor tiles in a thermal bath, nor withered a primitive heating system of terra-cotta tubes that once channeled hot air through ancient walls.

Rounding out the crypt’s exposition are glass cases holding ancient bric-a-brac retrieved from houses and interior streets. The shards include pottery bowls, hexagonal glass bottles, combs, needles of animal bone, thimbles, a baby’s teething ring and six pieces of money dating from the 2nd Century BC.

Across town, in the tony 16th arrondissement , few tourists strolling the Rue de Passy realize that they are 100 granite steps above the city’s only wine museum. Buried under the former Passy abbey, the Musee du Vin is essentially an outsized wine cave which, next to a Frenchman’s pronunciation, is his greatest source of pride. Museum visitors enter a warm, tiled interior lined with tapestries and piped-in jazz music, all soothing distractions from the cellar’s lack of natural light.

The museum’s self-guided tour lasts about 30 minutes, enough time to lavish tribute on every aspect of wine’s history and production.

No tour of an underground wine museum is complete without a tasting of complimentary wine, offered by the museum’s perpetually jolly manager. After the first sip of one of the white, red or rose vins du jour , the ache of museum feet begins to recede.

The final level of the Paris underworld, the sewers, have the majesty of the Grand Canal. They also churn along in great literature. In Volume III of Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables,” the hero, Jean Valjean, seeks haven from his enemies in the dank Parisian sewers. A section of the 1,312-mile system has been open to the public for self-guided tours since June of 1989.

To sink to these depths, a visitor takes a circular stairwell dug from the sidewalk near the Pont de l’Alma. With each step below ground, the nostrils inhale the bosky odor of an urban shower stall.

The hardware of Paris’ water purification system takes center stage underground. Tributaries leading into the main sewers are lined with large valves and five-ton “flusher boats.” With the grace of gondolas, these underground barges navigate channels and shove sand away.

The sewers are the final resting place for Paris’ discarded and disowned. That stamped metro ticket, uncorked cork, dirty cafe napkin or drained Evian bottle all eventually come to rest in the roiling tumble of Seine sewer water. Shower, sink, dishwasher and yes, toilet water, all flow into the sewers.

Like other underground attractions, the Parisian sewers bestow an extensive history lesson. The sewer’s history goes back to the camel-backed aqueducts that dotted the Roman town of Lutece on the Seine’s Left Bank. The great innovations of the Roman Empire did not extend to waste management, as open sewers flooded most of Lutece. However, the Romans did extract water from local springs at Rungis and Wissous to feed the thermal baths of the very wealthy. Today, those Roman sources are buried beneath the 60 floors of the Montparnasse skyscraper.

The sewer tour ends in a final chamber, which has been turned into a theater with a tongue-in-cheek movie glorifying the people who toil underground. Looking much like spelunkers in lantern caps and spiked boots, the sewer denizens trudge through the darkened tunnels to a “Chariots of Fire” score. Superimposed over the screen is the telephone number, 44-66-49-25. This is underground Paris’ version of 911. Dial it and a sewer worker will rescue that key or diamond earring that slipped through a manhole grate.

After that good deed, he’ll likely join the rest of Paris in a brasserie --very above-ground.

GUIDEBOOK

Going Underground in Paris

Thick-soled tennis shoes, not calfskin Guccis, are recommended footwear for the occasionally damp, cobbled walkways.

Both the wine and sewer museums can’t resist setting up a gift shop at the end of their tours. The Musee du Vin’s “three-for” deal offers a bottle of red (1990 Cote du Rhone), one of two whites (a 1990 Pinot Blanc d’Alsace or a 1990 Gaberle Gaillac) and a rose (1990 Rose du Tarn) for $14. Big spenders can part with $100 for a 1959 Balard Montrachet. The sewers’ gift shop peddles key rings, T-shirts, calendars, imitation underground flashlights and calculators.

Either one of the weekly guides to Paris, “Pariscope” or “L’officiel de Spectacles,” contains a list of the city’s underground museums and attractions.

The Catacombs

At 1 Place Denfert-Rochereau (metro stop: Denfert-Rochereau). Telephone 43-22-47-63. Open Tuesday through Friday, 2-4 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 9-11 a.m. and 2-4 p.m. Ticket price: about $3; reduced rate, about $2. A special tour leaves every Wednesday at 2:45 p.m. at a cost of about $2.25, plus the entry fee.

Notre Dame Crypt

At Notre Dame (metro stop: Cite). Telephone 43-29-83-51. Open daily, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Ticket price: about $4.25; reduced rate, about $2.30.

Musee du Vin

At Rue des Eaux (metro stop: Passy). Telephone 45-25-63-26. Open daily, noon-6 p.m. Entry price, including wine tasting, is about $4.60, about $3.60 for children.

The Sewers

At Place de la Resistance, on the left side of the Pont de l’Alma, along the quai d’Orsay (metro stop: Alma-Marceau). Telephone 47-05-10-29. Open Saturday through Wednesday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Ticket price: about $4; reduced price, about $3.