Les Carrières de Paris

The Les Carrières de Paris geocache (GC78QG8) was placed in August 2017 by fran6ois, beneath the south of the French capital. A traditional cache on paper, it is rated 5/4.5 and calls for plunging into the catacombs of Paris along passages that are sometimes flooded, headlamp and UV lamp in hand: the marks that flag the route only show up under ultraviolet light. It is probably the most incredible adventure Paris has to offer - provided you find a way in.

The quarries are a piece of the city's history. The local limestone has been extracted since Gallo-Roman times, first in open pits, then underground from the 12th century onwards. Quarrying was so intense that the city eventually began to collapse into itself. To solve the problem, Louis XVI created the Inspection générale des carrières in 1777 to shore up the subsoil. The network today runs to nearly 300 kilometres of galleries.

The box waits in "la plage", the busiest room of the southern network: a quarry void turned into an underground tavern at the end of the 19th century (Paris had some thirty of them), moved below ground for the constant coolness of the quarries. The floor is covered in sand, and the wall carries a large wave painted after Hokusai by the Rats collective in the 1980s, regularly restored since by cataphiles.

One point of fact, which the owner himself recalls: moving around these quarries is forbidden by a prefectural order of 2 November 1955 and punishable by a fine.
Consider yourself warned!