Sound of the UNDERGROUND

Paris is renowned for its iconic Métro stations and underground system, a feat of 19th-century engineering, as Sandra Haurant discovers

- Sandra Haurant

The first line of the Paris Métro was opened in 1900, but plans to build an underground railway were hatched long before, in 1855, when Engineers Édouard Brame and Eugene Flachat unsuccessfully proposed a line to serve the market at Les Halles. So while London opened its subterranean Metropolitan Railway in 1863, and Berlin opened the U-Bahn in 1871, it wasn’t until 1896 that the city authorities gave the go-ahead for Paris’ underground network.

It was Fulgence Bienvenüe, a Breton engineer, who impressed with his electric underground railway. Quite literally a groundbreaking project, work began on the necessary tunnels in 1898.

Grand opening