A hoax but it does paint an interesting picture of atmosphere inside the catacombs, if you can put up with the voice over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GakTtXQGuo0&feature=related
Monday, 5 May 2008
Publication
An example of an Infiltration article.
The Buffalo Central Terminal
by Ninjalicious and Liz
Buffalo, New York, is a lucky city. True, the weather is terrible, crime is high, the economy is dead and the suburbs are usually on fire, but Buffalo still has a lot going for it.
The city's main attraction is a tall, dark tower that bursts forth from otherwise flat land in the middle of a residential subdivision and soars 20 storeys up into the air. The looming, monolithic tower and the vast, art deco train station to which it is attached were constructed in 1929 and served the New York Central railway, the Penn-Central railway and later Amtrak until being abandoned in 1979. In its heyday, the giant Buffalo Central Terminal was a focal point of the industrial and social life of one of the largest cities in the United States, where the marble floors were kept glistening and immaculate and people dressed in their Sunday best. Today, the relic sits abandoned and empty, largely neglected by all but some local friends of the station and a few appreciative explorers. It remains quite possibly the most beautiful building in the world.
To read more go here:
http://www.infiltration.org/abandoned-bct.html
I cannot recommend this site enough, just have a little look round.
The Buffalo Central Terminal
by Ninjalicious and Liz
Buffalo, New York, is a lucky city. True, the weather is terrible, crime is high, the economy is dead and the suburbs are usually on fire, but Buffalo still has a lot going for it.
The city's main attraction is a tall, dark tower that bursts forth from otherwise flat land in the middle of a residential subdivision and soars 20 storeys up into the air. The looming, monolithic tower and the vast, art deco train station to which it is attached were constructed in 1929 and served the New York Central railway, the Penn-Central railway and later Amtrak until being abandoned in 1979. In its heyday, the giant Buffalo Central Terminal was a focal point of the industrial and social life of one of the largest cities in the United States, where the marble floors were kept glistening and immaculate and people dressed in their Sunday best. Today, the relic sits abandoned and empty, largely neglected by all but some local friends of the station and a few appreciative explorers. It remains quite possibly the most beautiful building in the world.
To read more go here:
http://www.infiltration.org/abandoned-bct.html
I cannot recommend this site enough, just have a little look round.
Gallery
The Catacombs have many entrances of varying kinds throughout Paris, but for the official Catacombs tour, the entrance is a small green building on Place Denfert-Rochereau. There, a five euro entrance fee allows you to descend a tightly-wound steel staircase sixty feet down into the yellowish-cream-colored stone. It's a color that's already familiar as the color of Paris.
An account of a visit to the small tourist area of the catacombs, rest here:
http://asecular.com/ran/0201/020129.htm
An account of a visit to the small tourist area of the catacombs, rest here:
http://asecular.com/ran/0201/020129.htm
Gallery
I am trying to find a novel based in the future set in the catacombs called Bad Voltage, but at the moment the search isn't going well. I'm not even sure if there is an English translation. The novel is by Jonathan Littell who has also written Les Bienveillantes ('"The Kindly Ones'") which also sounds interesting and is soon to be translated into English.
Info on his latest novel:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6125742.stm
Info on his latest novel:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6125742.stm
Gallery
No popcorn, then?
Can underground cinema survive when you can find anything on the web? Andrea Hubert takes a subterranean journey
Friday December 7, 2007
The Guardian
In 2004, police found the remnants of an underground cinema in the Paris catacombs. It had been used by a group called Perforating Mexicans, who hijacked public spaces for art. They left behind a note, which asked its finders: "Don't try to find us." Underground, when truly underground, goes deep. Checking Perforated Mexicans' film schedule, I expected to find snuff, graphic porn, or at the very least cock-fighting, but discovered instead a cinephile's dream: the Japanese animation Ghost in the Shell, Coppola's Rumble Fish, and David Lynch's Eraserhead. In other words, this underground experience was less about the actual films shown, and more the radicalism of illegal cinema itself.
Rest of Article:
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,2223064,00.html
Gallery
"You guys have no idea what's down there."
In a secret Paris cavern, the real underground cinema
• Jon Henley in Paris
• The Guardian,
• Wednesday September 8 2004
Them bones, them bones: Les Catacombes, part of the miles of tunnels underlying Paris. Photo: AP
Police in Paris have discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum-restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital's chic 16th arrondissement.
Officers admit they are at a loss to know who built or used one of Paris's most intriguing recent discoveries.
"We have no idea whatsoever," a police spokesman said.
"There were two swastikas painted on the ceiling, but also celtic crosses and several stars of David, so we don't think it's extremists. Some sect or secret society, maybe. There are any number of possibilities."
Members of the force's sports squad, responsible - among other tasks - for policing the 170 miles of tunnels, caves, galleries and catacombs that underlie large parts of Paris, stumbled on the complex while on a training exercise beneath the Palais de Chaillot, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower.
After entering the network through a drain next to the Trocadero, the officers came across a tarpaulin marked: Building site, No access.
Behind that, a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, "clearly designed to frighten people off," the spokesman said.
Further along, the tunnel opened into a vast 400 sq metre cave some 18m underground, "like an underground amphitheatre, with terraces cut into the rock and chairs".
There the police found a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said.
A smaller cave next door had been turned into an informal restaurant and bar. "There were bottles of whisky and other spirits behind a bar, tables and chairs, a pressure-cooker for making couscous," the spokesman said.
"The whole thing ran off a professionally installed electricity system and there were at least three phone lines down there."
Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: "Do not," it said, "try to find us."
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.
There exist, however, several secretive bands of so-called cataphiles, who gain access to the tunnels mainly after dark, through drains and ventilation shafts, and hold what in the popular imagination have become drunken orgies but are, by all accounts, innocent underground picnics.
The recent discovery of three newly enlarged tunnels underneath the capital's high-security La Santé prison was put down to the activities of one such group, and another, iden tifying itself as the Perforating Mexicans, last night told French radio the subterranean cinema was its work.
Patrick Alk, a photographer who has published a book on the urban underground exploration movement and claims to be close to the group, told RTL radio the cavern's discovery was "a shame, but not the end of the world". There were "a dozen more where that one came from," he said.
"You guys have no idea what's down there."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/08/filmnews.france
In a secret Paris cavern, the real underground cinema
• Jon Henley in Paris
• The Guardian,
• Wednesday September 8 2004
Them bones, them bones: Les Catacombes, part of the miles of tunnels underlying Paris. Photo: AP
Police in Paris have discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum-restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital's chic 16th arrondissement.
Officers admit they are at a loss to know who built or used one of Paris's most intriguing recent discoveries.
"We have no idea whatsoever," a police spokesman said.
"There were two swastikas painted on the ceiling, but also celtic crosses and several stars of David, so we don't think it's extremists. Some sect or secret society, maybe. There are any number of possibilities."
Members of the force's sports squad, responsible - among other tasks - for policing the 170 miles of tunnels, caves, galleries and catacombs that underlie large parts of Paris, stumbled on the complex while on a training exercise beneath the Palais de Chaillot, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower.
After entering the network through a drain next to the Trocadero, the officers came across a tarpaulin marked: Building site, No access.
Behind that, a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, "clearly designed to frighten people off," the spokesman said.
Further along, the tunnel opened into a vast 400 sq metre cave some 18m underground, "like an underground amphitheatre, with terraces cut into the rock and chairs".
There the police found a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said.
A smaller cave next door had been turned into an informal restaurant and bar. "There were bottles of whisky and other spirits behind a bar, tables and chairs, a pressure-cooker for making couscous," the spokesman said.
"The whole thing ran off a professionally installed electricity system and there were at least three phone lines down there."
Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: "Do not," it said, "try to find us."
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.
There exist, however, several secretive bands of so-called cataphiles, who gain access to the tunnels mainly after dark, through drains and ventilation shafts, and hold what in the popular imagination have become drunken orgies but are, by all accounts, innocent underground picnics.
The recent discovery of three newly enlarged tunnels underneath the capital's high-security La Santé prison was put down to the activities of one such group, and another, iden tifying itself as the Perforating Mexicans, last night told French radio the subterranean cinema was its work.
Patrick Alk, a photographer who has published a book on the urban underground exploration movement and claims to be close to the group, told RTL radio the cavern's discovery was "a shame, but not the end of the world". There were "a dozen more where that one came from," he said.
"You guys have no idea what's down there."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/08/filmnews.france
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