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Concept
Paris sewers
Summary
The sewers of the French capital Paris date back to the year 1370 when the first underground system was constructed under Rue Montmartre. Consecutive French governments enlarged the system to cover the city's population, including expansions under Louis XIV and Napoleon III, and modernisation programs in the 1990s under Mayor Jacques Chirac. The system has featured in popular culture through its existence, including Victor Hugo's 1862 novel, Les Misérables, and H. L. Humes' 1958 novel The Underground City.
Until the Middle Ages, the drinking water in Paris was taken from the river Seine. The wastewater was poured onto fields or unpaved streets, and finally filtered back into the Seine. Around 1200, Phillipe Auguste had the Parisian streets paved, incorporating a drain for wastewater in their middle. In 1370 Hugues Aubriot, a Parisian provost had a vaulted, stone-walled sewer built in the "rue Montmartre". This sewer collected the wastewater and took it to the "Menilmontant brook". However, the wastewater was still drained in the open air.
Under the reign of Louis XIV, a large ring sewer was built on the right bank, and the river Bièvre was used as a sewer for the left bank of the Seine. On at least two occasions in the late 1700s, Paris refused to build an updated water system that scientists had studied. Women were actually carrying water from the river Seine to their residences in buckets. Voltaire wrote about it, saying that they "will not begrudge money for a Comic Opera, but will complain about building aqueducts worthy of Augustus". Louis Pasteur himself lost three children to typhoid. Under Napoleon I, the first Parisian vaulted sewer network was built. It was 30 km long.
In 1855, as a part of his plan to improve the sanitation and traffic circulation in Paris, Napoleon III ordered the construction of new boulevards, aqueducts and sewers. His prefect for the Seine, Baron Haussmann, and the engineer Eugène Belgrand, designed the present Parisian sewer and water supply networks.
Official source
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