Les Égouts - the Sewers, Paris

While not everyone's cup of tea, the guided tour of the Sewers is informational (and free!). The museum has a unique odor that is not is as unpleasant as you would initially presume. The exhibits are rather interesting as well.

This is really off the beaten path and not top on my list of things to visit in Paris, I imagine it would have been much cooler to visit back in the days when you could take a boat ride through the sewers (look for the attached picture in the exhibits) but it was interesting to see. There are quite a few miles of sewers beneath Paris, the section you get to see is just a very small part of it.

Unfortunately we were not there when there was an English tour being conducted so we wandered through on our own, I think it would have been much more interesting if we knew some of the history and what we were looking at.

The guidebooks all say that it is smelly, perhaps this is so during the summer months but I don't think it was that bad in the winter. And you don't get dirty while down there either :-)

The visit to the museum and the sewers of Paris is is very original way to learn the history of the building of Paris! You will learn there how sewers are so important in a big city to enable life together! The museum is situated in a cleaned part of the sewers and still contains differents canals...so altough the museum is desinfected, the odour can be somewhat "typical" but the descriptions on the board are so interesting that you do'nt care anymore :-) The guided tour is free, so don't hesitate to follow it!!!!!

Address:
Musée des Egouts de Paris (Museum of the Sewers of Paris); Pont de l'Alma (Place de la Resistance); facing 93 Quai d'Orsay, 75007 Paris;

Though your visit will not quite be as dramatic as that by Jean Valjean in Hugo's immortal Les Miserables, you can tour the city's sewers with remarkably little disgust. Hugo described these manmade catacombs extensively in his novel, saying that the history of a city is the history of its sewers. Today, those of Paris are second in size only to those in Chicago.

The sewar 'cruise.' Take a tour of the fascinating old sewars running beneath Paris and learn about the famous heros and villains who used the elaborate network as refuge. The smell is not nearly as bad as one might expect.

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Underground Paris
The notorious sewers.Say hello to the Phantom of the Opera as you tour this marvel of pre-modern plumbing.
The picture is an exhibit in the Egouts-The Paris Sewers.

Musee des Egouts de Paris (Paris Sewage museum) is really off the beaten track and worth it... Left Bank, next to the Pont de l'Alma.