The real Paris underground city, an underground labyrinth where 6 million people are buried

Bulah 2021-12-20 08:01:04


When I was in Paris two years ago, I visited the underground cemetery in Paris by chance. Without a torch, no map, no food or water, I made an exploration. That experience made me unforgettable for a long time after I returned to the ground. I searched a lot of information about this underground maze on the Internet and found the trailer of this movie that was not released at the time. However, I don’t think I caught these mysteries. The authentic thrills and beauty of this film have always been disdainful. Even after watching this movie today, I found that the director wanted to use the background of the Barry Dungeon to tell a classic story (see other film reviews). In addition, the director still retained a part of the true face of the dungeon.
In June 2014, in order to practice French, I went to Paris to take classes by myself and lived in the University City of Paris. One night I went to a party in one of the dormitories. I met a Danish boy and invited my friend Dmitri and I to les catacombs with them tomorrow night.
Because I don’t know what catacombs is like, my friend only said it was muddy inside. I was thinking about playing. I didn’t even wear sneakers at the time. I wore low-heeled short boots and trousers that I bought for 20 yuan a few days ago. The jacket went out. He took five yuan and four rolled leaves. We first gather at the entrance of a church. At the end of the film, the protagonist and the little soy sauce crawl out of the sewer. That sewer is also one of the real entrances and exits of the dungeon. After entering from there, it is actually a wider passage. Two people can barely pass through, and they can stand without bowing their heads. The passage can lead to a very spacious space, which is the largest in the dungeon. People call these spaces salle or chambre, which can be understood as caves or tombs. The highest point of this cave is two stories high. Because it is spacious and relatively safe, it is the place where the most people hold parties. The underground city is held here every New Year's Eve. I haven't been to this cave, but I have seen it in a youtube documentary. It is most likely the cave where the man in black (Satan) was at the end of the film.
Due to the rain that night, the line was cancelled. We decided that since we were out, we might as well go to see the underground city together. So I took the tram to Porte d'Orléans, and, as in the movie, we also went to the narrow hole in the wall from the abandoned railroad track to enter the underground. One difference is that the iron gate from the sidewalk to the track is locked, and the barbed wire is not broken. You must climb over the high wall to enter. Due to the cancellation of the party that night, many people gathered on the railway who wanted to enter the underground on their own. However, because there was no power and signal underground, some people lost their way and died. Usually, they would not enter without a guide. It's not difficult to find and think. Unlike in the movie, the female lead goes to the nightclub to find a guide. (The nightclub here is under the Alexander Bridge, named showcase, mostly popular hip-hop, I have also been to it). The guides are usually at the entrance of the cave waiting to take people down. Many of them are artists. They work in the tombs all year round. Leading people down is nothing more than to have a companion, not for money, and no charge.
When we arrived at the entrance of the cave that night, plus a total of 26 of us wanted to go underground, in the end only eight of us moved fast, and saw the guide immediately followed in. When you enter the tomb, you must lie down. There are many gravel hiccups on the ground. After entering, it is a relatively spacious aisle as in the film. There are signposts and many graffiti on the wall. This entrance is the most well-known entrance to the dungeon. It has not been blocked after the film was released. A large part of the reason is that the maze is intricate and difficult for the police to enter and drive away because of the people living underneath. If caught by the police, you will only be fined 60 euros, which is not as serious as Papillon said in the movie. The walkway was relatively spacious at the beginning, the walls were straight and smooth, and the underground was ordinary cement road. The back gradually became narrower, the ceiling became lower, and the walls on both sides were potholes and relatively damp. We have no experience and don't know how to carry a flashlight, so we had to hold a mobile phone to illuminate and walk forward on the wall with one hand. Soon there was more and more water on the ground. After a few turns, the road suddenly dented, except that there was no water on both sides of the wall. This is the bloody tunnel in the movie, where the hand stretched out from the water to catch the heroine.
Since then, the water has been getting more and more, the highest point is at the root of my thigh, the ground is uneven, a bit like a stalactite, and my foot is completely broken. This is after a group of people entered the tunnel in the film, Pap pointed to the waterway and said that it leads to a cool room, but we will not go today. He should be referring to chateau, or la plage. The former means a castle. It is a relatively small cave, the size of which is the same as a box. There are stone benches on both sides of the wall. There are sculptures of birds and beasts on the wall. There is a stone table in the middle. It is an abandoned mine tunnel. Behind the stone table is an open space of about 4 square meters slightly higher. The highest point is about 1.2 meters. A mini castle is built of cement on it. It is half a meter high. It is a masterpiece of our guide. Since then, the cave was officially named the castle and marked on the map of the dungeon. Another room, la plage, is also mentioned in the video. In the minivan, the lunch duo held a map and said, we are walking near la plage. La plage means beach and is one of the most famous rooms. It is more spacious and has a stone figure at the entrance. When we were underground, because our feet were cold at night and the underground was damp, there was always a mist moving in the dungeon, which was particularly infiltrating. We have just entered la plage, there are already a few people inside, listening to music and chatting. In fact, there are many handsome French boys in the dungeon carrying cassette radios to play their own recorded music, a feeling of the 80s and 90s. After the mist drifted away, I saw the wall with Japanese-style graffiti imitating the Japanese style surfing in Kanagawa, as well as Mount Fuji, the sun and the white crane, so it was called the beach. Our guide slipped away while we were resting there. (Damn, he went to do art creation) because we said before that we were crawling underground and swimming in the mud and we wanted to go out, but he had to work until noon the next day (actually he was a tramp)
so We found three handsome French guys (super handsome, I suspect they are monsters turned into by the underground dead), and took us on, to several other caves to explore, and finally came to a more spacious cave with rows and rows. The long stone bench, facing a table, feels a bit like a church. Here the three brothers said they were leaving, they were going to the tomb to see the dead. This is the first time I know that there are actually six million dead people piled up there. (Verify my previous theory, the bone essence is going back to the bone hole)
The partner who came in with me had no water but wine at all, no light and a few candles, and no food and cigarettes. I flew my leaves, without a word of French, and we were all silent in the dark. At this time, another group of French boys came in and greeted us. We said that we had been underground for a few hours and wanted to go out. They said why, I said brother, I came in wearing high heels. They shone my foot with a lamp and almost didn't laugh. Said that I was the first living person to come in with high heels in hundreds of years, and wanted to take me out alive. Afterwards they chatted with me, knowing that I came to Paris to learn French, but didn't learn a sentence, thought I was super funny, and promised me to take me up immediately. Contrary to the heroine of the film, she used the funny comparison to kill her teammate, and I used the funny comparison to save the teammate. Because we don't have any lights, a few French brothers alone led us to follow their lead, and the lead took the stereo and they walked and rapped. Maybe you didn't expect it when you watched the movie. Since we did not return the same way, some passages were very narrow, and the flashlight could only reach a small area under our feet. We were basically blind by the little brother. I also passed the place where the heroine's father hanged. There is no real place in the film, but they didn't jump into the cave and walk down. Those places don't exist. The second is the diving tomb. The tomb and the coffin are real. The tomb is called a fountain, because the pool is actually living water, but it is not known whether it leads to another tomb. In fact, there was a slope where the heroine's father hanged. There was an upside down peg on his head. When I ran on the slope, I almost hit me and killed me. The heroine's father is hung here. Because only this place has emboli. And this place is very far from the sewer where the heroine escaped. There are actually two stations away. Therefore, the aisles where the heroine ran after turning around were shot near the exit of the sewer, which is not the same place as the place where father hanged. The place where Dad hanged was actually close to the original entrance. After passing through this place, crawling through a narrow tunnel (there is a lot of glass slag on the ground), you can return to the original ground and there is water in the ground. You can go back to the railroad track when you return to the same place from here. Therefore, it is inferred that the locations where the film was shot are very close to the two exits, and it does not really go deep into the underground labyrinth. The deepest part should be the coffin. The place full of bones should be taken in a museum. There is a museum about the catacombs in Denfert-Rochereau, which displays a part of the underground, including some bones, which should be the ones shown in the film.
After eight hours underground, at 7 o'clock in the morning on June 28th, my friends and I finally climbed out of the tracks and returned to the outside world. We took a photo on the side of the road, covered in mud, with burnt holes in our clothes, and with the strange eyes of the aunt on the tram, we returned to the university town.

View more about As Above, So Below reviews

Extended Reading
  • Tia 2022-03-27 09:01:09

    Nicole LeMay angered his sense of existence!

  • Johann 2022-04-20 09:01:47

    Visualizing the hell of Dante's Divine Comedy, a very interesting horror film

As Above, So Below quotes

  • Scarlett: His little brother drowned in a cave when they were young.

  • Scarlett's Father: Why won't you talk to me, Scarlett?