Maris Kurme is a young art historian working in the field of tourism. She's been leading groups around Europe for several years, following the footsteps and experience of her mother and grandmother before her. She primarily works in the field of outbound tourism from Estonia. She narrates her experience of having explored what lies beneath the city of lights.

A city that is big enough to be able to be classified as a „metropolis" or at least „a big city" is definitely three-dimensional This measure varies very much in different cities. In a way it could be said that cities can be compared to buildings of different storeys And by this I don't mean the height of buildings physically situated in that city. I used the city of Paris as an illustration. All the separate floors of a city could be divided into three more general different units or divisions to begin with. The main three units I would classify as such: subterranean, on the ground and in the air. Each of them will then and in turn be subdivided into different layers, the number of which depends on the specific example at hand. However, the size of a city plays a big role in how many floors a city has, as well as the history and geographic location of the particular place. In Paris I would count three floors in the subterranean level - the first of which would be the catacombs. This is the most ancient of the three, but it is still very wide network of underground tunnels, halls and rooms. The Romans started digging the tunnels, even though during their time it was out of Paris, of course. However, as the city has grown so much, now all the dozens of kilometres the Romans dug, meander under the Southern parts of Paris. It is still possible to visit them, though just about 3 kilometres of the whole huge network - for the sheer reason that the catacombs are pretty dangerous and easy to get lost in. Even the one part that is open for visitors and therefore kind of touristicized, creates creepy and cold feeling for the rest of the day.
The reason? Maybe the fact that it is really damp, dark and there is an endless maze down there… Maybe because the catacombs are full of human bones that were reburied there from the old cemeteries of Paris all put properly in stacks and bordering your walk all the time. Or maybe because the exit from the catacombs brings you to absolutely undecipherable place between endless houses and that whichever direction you start going, it will take you lots of orientation to get back to some place that you know. The catacombs are a very famous and popular part of Paris. The queues from its entrance always circle the whole area and while waiting there, everybody is sitting or standing with their noses in the books. As I mentioned, all the floors of Paris are well covered in the field of literature. Just a couple of months ago I happened to step into a bookstore and thumbed through a book on haunted places of Europe.

Its author wrote a very vivid description of the catacombs of Paris among other places. The story of the catacombs is also present in most of the books on history of Paris, The main reason the Romans started digging the tunnels in the city of lights was to get building material for the dwellings in the center of Paris. And to a reader interested in more macabre matters, the catacombs come up in the books describing the dreadful events in the cemetery of innocents and the unholy and wicked parties that were held underground in the company of millions of bones centuries later. This way or another, it has been well written about and it is also well worth a visit in my opinion, especially when one is trying to get the glimpse of different heights of Paris.

The second floor of the subterranean Paris is the subway or le métro. This in turn could in some cities also be divided into different layers or maybe mezzanines in that case. For example in London, the underground has been levelled so that deeper tunnels are used by the trains carrying post & cargo and the upper level is used for the passenger trains and normal traffic of people. Anyway, compared to the catacombs, this Parisian floor is much more used for sure - millions of people use it daily to avoid street traffic jams and other inevitable difficulties of the metropolitan traffic. A part of this layer is also very closely connected to the upper floors of the city. Le métro runs in the different depths all through the city - there are a couple of places where the métro line is levelled on the columns and is moving in the air instead of being buried deep underground. However, mostly it is still very deep under the ground and while it offers you the big advantage in saving time, you don't see the marvels of the upper floors of the city.

However, speaking of the métro, there exists one very funny and weird link between the subway and literature in the French capital. Anybody who has ever used the métro of Paris has definitely noticed how the Frenchmen spend all their time in the underground behind books. They hardly ever lift their gaze from the pages of a sweet romantic love story or inspector Maigret mystery.

The third and highest floor of the subterranean Paris is the legendary sewers system of Paris. This is the largest of those three for sure, because it follows absolutely every single street of the real Paris. With a Paris city map you can move in the sewers without getting lost at all. It might only be a “bit” darker in there. There are even street names and house numbers on the walls of the canals, showing the streets and houses above them for a practical reason: to facilitate the work of sewermen. In fact, there are even more canals than streets in Paris, because the big magistral roads have up to 3 parallel canals under them, to deal with the amount of water. This top floor of underground Paris has the biggest connection with the upper world as well - it follows every single weather change and raises or lowers its waters accordingly; it takes part in every cleaning process of the city streets, because in Paris they do it by letting the water flow and carry all the trash underground; it even follows the TV programmes. The latter has a very funny explanation namely the French are known to be awful fans of football and during the football games none of them dare to go to the toilet, not to miss a goal. So when the half time is finished and there's a commercial break, all the Frenchmen rush to the toilet and when they're done, they all flush the toilet more or less at the same time…which in turn causes the water level in the sewers to change pretty noticeably. Well, it is definitely partly an urban legend, but at least it's an amusing explanation to the role the sewers play in the everyday life of a Parisian.

The sewers of Paris can also be visited, though it is illegal to do so alone and in most of the places. Of course, there have been many of those who have overlooked the rules. Among them were the French résistance during the Second World War. They made the canals famous as their headquarters and the canals helped them to move around the city without being caught as I mentioned above, the street system is exactly copied by the canal system, so they just moved underground to be unseen. Nowadays you can go and get the taste of the water system of Paris near the Eiffel tower in a specific (and more dry, rat-free, light and less dangerous) part. You never know if Victor Hugo walked in the same area when he was writing his „Les Misérables" or if he went on a trip somewhere else. But definitely, the most famous book dealing with the sewers is exactly that one. In the end of the book Jean Valjean is running in the canals with the hurt husband of his daughter… And the sewers are described in a very detailed way. Historic sources claim that Victor Hugo went to see the sewers of Paris just a little while after they were completed. It was illegal then, but conveniently his friend was the manager of the system, so he organised the writer a tour in the underground. A little later the tours became popular - higher middle class people used to love going down there: after all, they had read about it from a very popular book and riding a boat in the darkness seemed so romantic and adventurous. However, many boating accidents in the highly poisonous and filthy water have led to our generation not being able to enjoy the rowing anymore.

We are unfortunately limited to walking on a dry ground but nevertheless in romantic and literary surroundings that occur naturally in many more works of literary art than in just Hugo's famous saga After three floors of the subterranean city or we can just call it a basement we will get to the first floor (of many) of the real city's living quarters - or as it is usually perceived: the „on ground" or „on Earth" Paris.

How could this be subdivided?
It is divided by the heights of different surfaces in the city. The lowest one is river Seine and its banks. Then comes the street level, which is in most places quite several metres higher than the water level. The level of trees forms the part of greenery in the metropolis. And after that come all the different heights of different houses and I mean houses, not landmarks. The latter I will leave into the last category. Here I want to include the regular and similar looking houses built by Haussmann for example. Or occasional lower quarters of some Parisian banlieus or suburbs. Or the area of skyscrapers in the so-called „Little America" part of Paris. To put it in short, housing areas that are rather homogeneous concerning the height.

So, to start with the lowest on the way to the top, let's take the river. The Seine is definitely not what it used to be in the old days nor how it used to be described in the literature. Now it is crossed over by many bridges and there are endless sightseeing boats running back and forth The citizens use the river to angle out fish. Even though the water is polluted, it's getting better bit by bit and the scientists already say you won't die when you eat the fish caught from the Seine.But still the river has turned into something quite artificial in Paris. It is used for totally unnatural (but original) activities. For example quite a few people have discovered the possibility of using it as a living place, because the rents are terribly high in the city. When you go a little bit further from the total center, you'll notice living boats bordering both sides of the river. Even a famous actor who used to play the tall blonde guy with a black shoe has bought himself a houseboat and his permanent address given to prospective visitors is „Seine, near the Eiffel tower". And another quite interesting (and completely true) tidbit is that from time to time the Parisians bring loads of sand and spread it out on the quays and riverbanks in the total center of the Paris, so that the citizens could also enjoy the sunbathing and all the pleasures you normally enjoy on the beach. This is definitely not something you'd find very natural in the middle of the capital of such a big country.

The next floor after the Seine would be the one we normally consider to be the „first" or a „ground floor" of the city: namely the street network. As I have divided the city, it is only the 5th floor of the actual city, however people rarely seem to think of anything that is under it or any lower floor as worth mentioning. Two things of significance come to mind while thinking about that street & traffic floor. Firstly, it is naturally the horrible traffic of Paris and secondly the literary Paris with all its street life as described by Hemingway, or any of the countless world-class writers we study at school and enjoy as grownups…

Well as far as the traffic of nowadays is concerned, it's definitely not as bad as in some Southern metropolis - at least driving culture does exist in European big cities…to some extent. But for someone from such a tiny place like Estonia it does seem quite pompous with so many lanes and lights and cars. Everybody seems to be going somewhere. Traffic jams in every corner. Everybody pushing themselves in front of you and beeping horns if you don't let them. People crossing the roads where they shouldn't and when they shouldn't. So many signs. And behind the signs so many sights that you forget yourself to look in awe the facade of the Louvre and…boum…you've missed your chances to turn where you wanted to. That's the big and modern street of Paris. There are other types as well, of course the bustling grand boulevards that used to be such a mecca for artists, cafeterias and that are sung about in so many chansons. They are still bustling. There are also highways and the ring road with its ports of entrance and fast or “bottled in" traffic (like the French say for a traffic jam). Or then the more quieter streets of smaller neighbourhoods that are occasionally dotted by mini markets or newspaper stands and used by very few cars. Instead of them one can more likely see elegant old ladies on stiletto heels, with perfect make-up and accompanied by nicely combed little poodles on a leash-typical French.

There are also imaginary and literary streets of Paris - streets as they were one hundred years ago, full of all sorts of activities, such as travelling dentists who were pulling out people's teeth right on the pavement, encircled by a mass of flâneurs who happened to go past and stopped to see their fellow persons's suffering. There were street vendors who used to yell what they were selling, often undecipherably, but loud - the name of such a phenomenon was “les cris de Paris". In the small village-like streets of Montmartre or Montparnasse neighbourhoods there were donkeys eating, chicken walking, children running, artists painting and every morning at around 5 o'clock shepherds were leading a herd of goats around the small streets, shouting “milk, milk”. Then the housewives could stop him and have him milk a goat just in front of her house into her own bowl or bucket or even a glass. There were cafeterias and dance halls everywhere, where working men or artists drowned their feelings and where Verlaine was finishing his umpteenth glass in a wait for the green fairy to come and whisper him the verses that he could write up and publish under his name.

Or where Picasso and his company were giving out their pictures in exchange of a bowl of soup, sitting in a table next to the cafeteria owner's donkey, monkey and a bunch of white mice. That's the imaginary Paris now - and there's no need of saying that it's also very deeply a literary one. Countless of books have been written about Parisian streets, the characters you could meet there, the places where they met and entertainment they could see on a street. And not only books also paintings, drawings, films and songs mention the favourite corners of the lovers, best places to jump from a bridge, most humorous cabarets and best places where you could hope to meet Picasso, Verlaine, Toulouse-Lautrec, Appollinaire or others. As mentioned earlier, the next layer could be the one of trees, because Paris is quite a green city compared to for example Cairo or Chicago.

During the big building works of Haussmann, the Frenchmen also created a bunch of big parks in their capital and these are accompanied by many smaller squares, parks or gardens. Also the cemeteries belong to the parks or the places of greenery in this city, because they are literally big parks under which lie the monuments and memorials to the dead. Take for example the famous star-cemetery of Père Lachaise. And as even Hemingway has written, Frenchmen love their parks. Hemingway himself was a very frequent visitor of the gardens of Luxembourg Palace, especially during the time he wasn't yet that well known and had to count every penny. The reason for his love towards that place was very trivial - in a way comic, but also very sympathetic: namely he said that this was the only place where he could find a place distant enough from the streets that are full of restaurants and food vendors, which torture him with the smell of food… He couldn't afford to eat these days and it must be a real horrible torment for a hungry person to keep smelling the wonderful odours of French croissants or chocolate bread. Nowadays, however, the situation has turned quite vice versa. I don't mean that the eating places would have moved away from the streets, of course not, but the parks and greenery have turned into a very popular place where to have your lunch for example. Most of the working Frenchmen use their lunch break to go outside, buy a “baguette” or a sandwich and then go sit on the grass under a tree, munch their food and enjoy themselves. Everybody has their favourite place or a tree or a bush or a bench where they like to eat, so a hungry artist would just end up in even worse condition if he thought he'd be saved from seeing the food in a park.

But the Parisian parks are really wonderful places. You can just go, sit and watch the innumerable different people sitting on benches, reading books, singing or performing, studying or doing whatever. You will always meet different types, that's for sure. And you always have a chance to find wealth or at least a premonition of it… Because the Frenchmen say if you happen to step in a dog's „souvenir" with your left foot without noticing it, you'll be rich in a while. These days the dog's poop is, of course, supposed to be cleaned away, but there is still plenty of it left everywhere to make anyone looking up while walking rich.

And the last floor of this part of the cross-section of Paris would be the housing. Like I said earlier, I would like to keep only the regular and more or less homogeneous housing here and leave the singular higher elements for the last part or the top floors of the city. There are no problems with making that distinction, because as Paris was mostly built in the second half of the 19th century and designed in a compact way, then in the biggest part of Paris you will meet very typical and similar buildings. Their height is regulated by the width of the street; their façades are continuous with the unending lines of French windows and beautiful ironwork railings in front of them; their entrances (at least in the fancier neighbourhoods) are still guarded by porters who bring up your letters and make a note of your guests. Maybe the one thing that has changed from the times when they were first built is that while in the earlier times the lower floors were of more prestige and were inhabited by the richer people and the servants, maids, students and poorer people were refuged to the topmost floors of the houses then now things have been turned upside down. The lower floor apartments that are rather big, with high ceilings and therefore costly to keep and heat for example, these are left mainly for the foreigners who are living in Paris. For example, Americans rent many such apartments, whereas Frenchmen themselves try to avoid them if possible. Frenchmen have now moved to the upper floors, where they get a fantastic view and more romantic surroundings and that should theoretically be also more cheaper. However, all that drive to get an apartment under the roof has caused the price difference still to be rather negligible.

There are some regions or neighbourhoods of Paris that are not boasting with those typical Parisian dwellings. For example some far away banlieus or then the so-called “Little-America” alias La Défense, the skyscraper area in the Western side of Paris. It should be said that technically it is situated outside of Paris just outside the ring road. But still it is a part of the City of Lights, even if the only reason to confirm it might be the axis of three triumphal arches of Paris (the grand arche of la Défense being the largest, newest and most western one of them). The big arch is looking over a huge plaza and is surrounded by many powerful skyscrapers and works of modern architecture. And the “Little America” is still being built so fast that every time you go there you find something completely different, some new houses and sculptures, new roads etc. It's quite disorienting most of the time, as it's hard to imagine what else they can change there…and then you discover that they can change A LOT. And there is always room to be had. Renting of office areas doesn't go by usual people's standards over there in la Défense. There you see adverts everywhere telling you that “38 000 square meters of office ground to let out" etc. So it is indeed for the big companies. And mostly the headquarters of huge international incorporations are set there anyway.

This way or another, my personal opinion would be that the Parisians have organised it well when it comes to buildings. They have their historical center and they have new architectures, but not skyscrapers dotting the city - one here, another one there instead they have homogeneous city and homogeneous area of high rise buildings. This makes the silhouette of the city and its iconical and legendary monuments show out as spectacular and recognizable.

Having finished with the second bunch of storeys of Paris, we now have the last and upper part left. The one under the roof itself. This section I would divide only in two different levels. The first of the last two could, in my opinion, be those wonderful and high landmarks that make Paris what it is. Surely there are hundreds of must-sees in Paris, but the main ones tend to be high. The Eiffel Tower, for example. The towers of the Notre Dame Church, the Montparnasse tower, the top of the Montmartre with the church of Sacre-Coeur, Arc de Triomphe, Arc de la Défense, to name a few. All of these are very well known icons of Paris… And they all share one thing: you can climb to the top and be rewarded with a magnificent view of all the lower layers. (Well, just half of the lower levels, actually, since the subterranean three floors can be seen very partly: the catacombs not at all, the métro in the form of the big golden M-advertising the entrances to it, and the sewers can be seen in form of the street grills and metallic places covering the entrances.) You will also have the feeling that you are at the highest point - the walls do not suffocate you up there as they do in the streets of the Loop of Chicago for example. There is nothing higher than you on these roofs. You can see 360 degrees from the top of each of these buildings. You note the endless roofs of the city and all the normal everyday life pass under you. These places elevate you and place you above others - this is why I would place them to this last and highest part of the cross-section of the city.

The last floor even topmost of those monumental viewpoints… is the air itself. This floor is common to all of the cities and towns existing. And what I mean by it is the real aerial view. The length of experiencing this floor of Paris depends on a flight and direction whether you cross over the city for longer or shorter period and distance…or whether you are allowed to find a gap for your plane and you just have to circle around for a while. This way or another, by taking a plane to Paris you will have a chance to see the big city from above and this is amazing, no matter whether you happen to do it during the day or night. During the day you see the patterns which the streets organise in the fabric of a city. You're always excited about whether you see certain objects from your side of the window or whether it's on the other side of the aisle.. All this excitement always causes a bubble of emotions and excitement so vital in experiencing the city. During the night, if the weather conditions are in your favour, you see the innumerable lights that all signify human action in this capital of France and also the lights point out the landmarks, creating another perspective and way of seeing the skyline and the horizontal perception of it.

At the time of big World Fairs there was also another mezzanine, between those monumental viewpoints and airplanes, by the way. The Frenchmen used to be quite big explorers and experimenters of aviation techniques and machinery. They were testing balloons and small aircrafts, which people were anxiously watching from the ground and that in turn offered unique views of the city to those who dared to go up with them. They flew lower than the planes of today, of course… and considerably slower than the modern airships. Today the planes, fly at the height of 12 kilometres and at a speed of 800km/h…which restricts very detailed vision while just flying over Paris, which still offers beautiful and interesting views before landing in Paris. This is fair enough reason to make it the topmost floor of Paris in my opinion.

Summarily, there are nine different floors or layers of the city instead of just one or two that are mostly used or perceived. I can't speak for the others, but usually only the street and one higher level are perceived in everyday life. However, I figure that all these other levels or floors are also all complimentary to each other and none of them could be removed from the ensemble - the result of which would be pretty bad on the rest of the city. Each floor or the layer of it is an important storage room for some vital part of the city and they all play unquestionably a very important role in the proper functioning of the city. The question of floors and levels in a city has always intrigued me and I find it an interesting way of dividing the City of Lights.

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