Wednesday, September 08, 2004


subterranean cinema

"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 Sante prison was put down to the activities of one such group, and another, identifying itself as the Perforating Mexicans, last night told French radio the subterranean cinema was its work. " Posted by Hello