The Paris Sewer Museum is more interesting than you'd imagine! A hidden gem I highly recommend to Les Mis fans!

[Paris & Georgia Travelogue: A Journey to Learn about Tolstoy and Dostoevsky] (5) The Paris Sewer Museum is more interesting than you'd imagine! A hidden gem I highly recommend to Les Mis fans!

During this trip to Paris, there is a spot I highly recommend, even if it is a bit niche.

That is the Paris Sewer Museum, which I will introduce here.

The other side of the glamorous and beautiful city of Paris was a Paris covered in stench and filth.

From the 18th to the 19th century, Paris was one of the most prosperous cities in the world at the time. However, it cannot be overlooked that the negative aspects resulting from that prosperity were also extraordinary.

I previously introduced a book on this blog titled 'The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination' by Alain Corbin, and what was discussed in this book was truly shocking.

In this book, you can learn in detail about how dirty and filled with intense stench Paris was at the time, how public health measures were taken over the ages, and what kind of feelings citizens had about odors.

This book is quite intense. You could say it's a book that stimulates a morbid curiosity about the fact that Paris was once the dirtiest and most foul-smelling city in the world.

The culture of perfume developed against this backdrop, and the process of how culture and odor became intertwined was very interesting.

For Japanese people, who are obsessively clean, learning about these overseas sanitary conditions is definitely interesting. However, if you don't want to ruin your image of the Paris you admire, you might not want to force yourself to read it.

Now, this Paris, which was a city too dangerous in terms of hygiene to be called a 'Paris covered in filth,' changed drastically from the latter half of the 19th century. The trigger for this was the Second French Empire under Napoleon III. He pushed forward with the 'Haussmann's renovation of Paris,' a major project that created the beautiful cityscape of Paris as it exists today.

I talked about his major project in the article above, and in this way, not only were new roads and buildings constructed, but new sewer systems were also developed to improve public health.

Paris certainly had sewers before this. But they were built haphazardly, added one after another, and had become a labyrinthine situation where the internal structure was almost completely unknown. And there is a history of outlaws living in the city by taking advantage of that situation. That is why Thénardier from 'Les Misérables' was hiding there.

And as for our Jean Valjean, he traversed that very terrifying labyrinth, the sewers of Paris.

This is the entrance to the Sewer Museum. It is far cleaner and more modern than I had imagined.

As you go down the stairs, you enter an area that is actually used as a sewer.

The Sewer Museum finally begins. Can you feel the underground world that Jean Valjean walked through?

As the name Sewer Museum suggests, various exhibits about sewers are displayed here. I was worried about whether the smell would be strong since it is inside a sewer, but I didn't feel that much of a stench at the stage right after entering.

When you get to the area where the water is flowing, you do smell it. It is probably worse because of the humidity. But I've smelled this scent somewhere before... Yes, it's the smell of the restrooms in the izakaya under the elevated tracks in Yurakucho. That unique smell of sewage.

So, with that level of odor, it seems I can manage to get by without any major issues. Surely they wouldn't make a museum out of a place that was so foul-smelling it was unbearable. I felt quite relieved. I had been extremely worried about the smell getting stuck in my clothes.

I was surprised that they let us see such a long stretch. The sound of flowing water and the roaring of the ducts echoed through the space.

By the time you reach this area, you can clearly see that the water is quite murky. The smell also gets a bit stronger. I definitely don't want to fall in. But Jean Valjean carried the wounded Marius on his back and waded through sewage hundreds of times filthier than this. It's unbelievable...

It says no entry beyond this point. I laughed, thinking, who would want to go there anyway?

The areas I had walked through so far were brightly lit. But when you really think about it, there was, of course, no electricity in the sewers back then. Although this photo is slightly illuminated by lights, the genuine sewer beyond this point is filled with this kind of true darkness. Moreover, while it doesn't come across in the photo, the sound of the water is quite intense, which multiplies the fear many times over.

Jean Valjean kept walking through a place like this without any light and without knowing the way. And since it was a sewer from the past, the harshness of the environment was incomparable to this. Yet, Jean Valjean survived and made it out. Coming to this sewer museum, I could only be amazed once again at what a monster Jean Valjean was.

Of course, the sewer scene on the musical stage doesn't have this kind of filth or smell. But by coming here, I was able to get a sense of the kind of place Valjean walked through. I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of feeling I'll get when I see the musical next time.

I highly recommend this sewer museum as a hidden gem in Paris, not just for Les Mis fans, but for everyone. There is no doubt that it is a fascinating spot where you can experience a different, darker side of Paris, rather than the glamorous one.

This article is a reconstruction of the following article previously introduced on this blog.

In this article, I also provide a more detailed explanation of Les Mis and the sewers, as well as introduce the Luxembourg Gardens, a place associated with Les Mis; the home of Victor Hugo, the author of "Les Misérables"; and Père Lachaise Cemetery, where Valjean was buried.

I would be happy if you could also refer to the original article above.
That concludes "Visiting the Paris Sewer Museum: A hidden gem I highly recommend to Les Mis fans!"

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