The new restaurant of the French college, completly new, air conditionned and a very nice view on Paris. Lucky guys!

Enjoying the sunset on the island. In the shadow, you can see the bridge, accessing the bunker of Capucins.

A piece of amateur map founded in the quarry. I don't know the author of this one. Please contact me if you recognized yourself...

source: unknown

This quarry is called the quarry of the bombs simply because there is an big drawing on a wall, who names the quarry. The quarry is located, like many others, in the plain of Montesson.

The EDF tower of Cergy Pontoise was built in 1974 by the architects Renzo Moro and Guy Lagneau. It is the tallest building in the Val d'Oise. It is 86m high and 14 floors. From innovative design, is one of the first buildings in France to have a structure irrigated. The building is constructed with water-filled tubes which protects it in case of fire.

source: Wikipedia

Cathedral Saint-Etienne de Bourges has been built from the year 1195. Its construction lasted almost a century.

We do not know the name of the architects of the cathedral. The Gothic cathedral is original and innovative.
It was classified a historical monument in 1862. The cathedral is also on the list of World Heritage by UNESCO in December 1992.

This room is one of the largest of the underground quarry sand. Its length is over 20m. The pillars of wood supporting structures are now as fragile as paper.
However, the ceiling is very strong. While the underground quarry remains wet sand stays compact. There was very little collapse since I know her.

Quarries of Herblay are over 14km wide and some hundreds of meters deep, on hillsides along the Seine.

In 1776, the exploitation of new underground quarries in Paris was forbidden. People had to take the stone elsewhere. It is for this reason that the quarry was known as "Imperial quarry" or "Quarry of the city of Paris". They built many monuments in Paris with this stone because it was high quality (the famous Royal stone).

Among the monuments built, there was The Pantheon of Paris, Department of Marine Place de la Concorde, the Gare de l'Est, the mint as well as many statues at Versailles.

The network's quarries has been excessively exploited in Herblay. The ceiling is fragile and the walls separating the tunnels are very thin. To reinforce the quarry, they have added many pillars and reinforcement structures.

Later, like many underground quarries, they served to mushroom plantation in the 1980s. The workers have dug additional corridors between small quarries networks.

A few years later and they were gradually abandoned. The latest mushroom plantation closed in 1995.

Since 2003, the association "Herblay heritage" has undertaken to make public visits to the part of the "English entry" with the famous double-arched vault and pretty ponds.

This corridor is almost completely around one of the last level gave me the solution to the legend that surrounds the courthouse in Brussels. Indeed, the legend says there are so many rooms that nobody really knows the number. It would suffice to count them you say? Certainly, but the legend also says that some rooms are hidden! And it's true! This corridor will lead to narrowing to a dead end. But shortly before, once a straight line (since it is the turn of the last square base, so that makes 4 times) there is a steep staircase, added a bit anyway, which is sometimes blocked the passage a pipeline. This staircase leads into empty rooms mysteriously seem to have been recently refurbished (light, electrical outlets). Impossible to know what they were good or what they will be used, it is already difficult to access with empty hands, imagine the trouble we have to make a table! No other access to these rooms, no windows.

A plaque engraved stone, lost in the informal network of underground quarries of Paris.

Ossa arida
Audite verbum Domini
Intromitam in vos spiritum et vivetis
Et dabo super vos nervos
Et succrescere faciam super vos carnes,
Et superextendam in vos cutem
Et dabo vobis spiritum
Et vivetis ossa arida

Listen, dry bones.
Listen to the voice of the Lord.
The mighty god of our ancestors,
Who created a breath beings,
Join your separate nodes.
You will pick the new flesh.
The skin will form on them.
Bone dry, you will live.