I was looking at some old maps of underground quarries in the Paris suburbs, and I noticed the presence of strange underground network just beneath a mental asylum built in the 1600s. The hospital itself is well documented online and is still active today, but I did not find anything about its catacombs, which was very surprising given the history of the cataphile community in Paris. So I decided to go look by myself.
After a few tips given by Cigale, we got inside the hospital past during the day and found our way down the basement. From there, a long spiral staircase took us past some sewer tunnels down to a large arched room, which was certainly a place for parties organized by medical staff interns.
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But this was only the beginning, as we saw a small door at the end of one room, we continued down a long slope going even deeper underground. This is where we found what we have been looking for: the asylum catacombs.
Originally used as limestone quarries similar to other ones in Paris, this quarry was created by the asylum monks until the 1860s, then transformed into a mushroom farm, and finally consolidated at the end of the 19th century.
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We found old writings from the 1850s onwards, and some cataphile signatures from the 1980s. We found some interesting features: nice consolidation arches and
fontis. We had to rely on a few arrows painted on the wall to find our way back, which luckily turned out to be correct (don't try this in the GRS).