Paris Metro

After 20 years of bickering between the City of Paris and private transport companies about whether to have an underground or overground rail system, the Paris metro opened in 1900 - 27 years after the first London underground line opened.

Stations

Here are some useless facts about the areas after which some of the stations were named.

Bienvenüe

Re-named after the chief engineer of the Metro, Fulgence Bienvenüe. This station was originally named Avenue du Maine. It was later fused with Montparnasse to create the 4th busiest station in Paris.

Tuileries

Did you know that the Tuileries palace and gardens, after which the station was named, was itself named after an establishment that made tiles (tuiles)?

Marcadet-Poissoniers

Two stations joined together. Marcadet is named after the Rue Marcadet (from the Latin mercadus for market), and Poissoniers after Rue Poissoniers - an ancient route from the north down which fish sellers trod.

Châtelet

Named after a little chateau (although named the Grand Châtelet to differentiate it from one across the river) built by Louis the Gros in 1130 and extended to become one of Paris' more sinister edifices. It was a centre of adminstration, it housed a court, a prison, and a morgue - which was useful to house the bodies of witches burned there and villains tortured there. Counterfeiters were boiled. Not a pleasant place. It was eventually demolished in 1810. For more gruesome details see this article in Metropole Paris.

Oberkampf

Named after a German industrialist, Philippe Oberkampf. He was the creator of the famous Toiles de Jouy in Jouy-en-Josas in 1859.

Chateau d'Eau

Lovely name - not so lovely area. It was originally named after a fountain designed by Pierre-Simon Girard. It was originally placed in the Place du Chateau d'Eau, which is now confusingly Place de la R épublique. The fountain has been moved to Parc de la Villette.

Nation

Formerly known as Place du Trône, after a throne placed there to welcome Louis XIV and Marie-Therese into the city in 1660. During the revolution it was cheekily named Place du Trône Renversé when the guillotine was situated there.

Glacière

This area at the Bière river formed lakes and ponds where animals drank. In winter it was a great place to find large quantities of ice, and an iceworks was therefore present in the area.

Pyramides

Named after the Napoleonic victory at the Battle of the Pyramids (or Embabeh) in Egypt in 1798.

Gobelins

The world-renowned Gobelins tapestry factory was named after the Gobelin fabric dying family whose works on the outskirts of Paris Henry IV turned into a tapestry establishment.

Metro in the Sky?

There was a much-derided alternative plan for the Paris train system, put up by the truly visionary Edouard Mazet in 1884. He proposed a system which used neither rails, nor wagons, nor bridges, nor tunnels. He reasoned that it was impossible to fit an underground sytem under a town that was already built, and that it wouldn't work building one before a town was constructed as there weren't the inhabitants there to use it. Overground railways were also undesirable as they blighted the city with bridges and viaduct. Mazet therefore came up with a "boat" system whereby boat wagons would slide between a series of lampposts set closely together. The boat would be long enough so that each end could rest on a post. It's unclear how the boats would be propelled, and it's unlikely that the technology existed at the time to make it successful - which is probably why the Metro was built instead!