In which we search for a hidden river

Everyone knows that there is a river flowing through Paris, the Seine, which divides the city into two halves, the left bank to the south of the river, and the right bank to the north. There is another river that flows through Paris, though, hidden beneath buildings and slabs of concrete on its way to the banks of the Seine. The river Bièvre still flows freely at its source in Yvelines, some 20 miles from where it flows into the Seine, but the river has been covered along its entire length inside the city of Paris since the beginning of the 20th century, when the last stretch of the river was covered up. It had been a useful river, especially within the city, lined with tanneries and dyers, shoemakers and laundries, providing power to run mills and the spinning wheels and looms of the famous Gobelins (and another), diverted from its original channel, which flowed into the Seine near what is now the Gare d'Austerlitz, in the 12th century to power the Abbey de Saint-Victor, so that it entered the Seine near the end of what is now the Rue de Bièvre. Alas, all of this choked the little river, turning the River Bièvre into little more than conveyer of sewage to the Seine, until Baron Haussmann, in his redesign of the city of Paris, began the process of covering the river, consigning it to run underground through the city. Now it no longer empties into the Seine, but into the sewers of Paris, where the water can be treated before it is released. Recently, the possibility of restoring the river along some of the stretches where it runs through the city were explored, but the estimated cost proved prohibitive, and so the city contented itself with marking in various places and and various ways the course(s) that the river had followed during its travel through the city.

And so the river has passed even from the memories of most people in Paris, because only the very oldest Parisians would have been born at the time when the last of the stretches of river were covered up. Recently though, there has been a move to commemorate the river through the use of parks and fountains and brass plaques on buildings and set into the pavement, and a stretch has been added to one of the Île-de-France hikes which follows the course of the River Bièvre through Paris.

At this point you are probably thinking that this is all very interesting, but that it doesn't really seem to have much relevance to our lives. But, you see, the street that we are living on here in Paris is called the Rue de Bièvre, or street of Bièvre, and several days ago Cherry found a brass plaque set into a wall at the end of the street (on the side of a restaurant called Tournebièvre, or roughly, turn of the Bièvre) which referred to the River Bièvre, and so our interest was piqued.

I spent the next several evenings trying to figure out where exactly the river had gone, which turned out to be surprisingly difficult. It was easy to find that it had gone past the Gobelins, and that it had run into the Seine at the foot of our street, but as to what it did in between, or on the other side of the Gobelins, well, that was a bit more opaque. The website of an annual art show called Lezarts de la Bièvre provided some information, and the discovery the route had been added to an official French hike was exciting until I discovered that the route was available only though purchasing a book, and not yet online. Finally I came across a Google maps document that traced out the route of the river, including both the original channel, and the Canal des Victorins, which had passed almost under our building, and another showing where at least some of the larger plaques were located, and so on Wednesday, since the weather promised to be mostly dry in the middle of the day, we set out in search of the river.

We started at the Seine at the end of the street, hoping for some evidence of where the river (or to be entirely accurate, the canal) had entered the Seine, but we were unsuccessful. No matter, we would forge ahead, accompanied by our map of the river, to trace it further. Up the Rue des Bernadins we went, scouting the pavement and walls for signs of the river. We found none. We followed Rue Jussieu (which was supposed to be more or less directly above the canal) to the Jardin des Plantes. Nothing. At this point we had covered nearly a mile and a half, and had seen no sign of the river, other than the plaque at the end of our street. Cherry was ready to give up. Sapphire was ready to give up. Ezio thought we should try going a little bit further, and so we walked the rest of the way through the park, and out, following what was more or less the path of the river. And then, walking along Rue Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, I heard a shriek. Cherry had found the first of what would turn out to be many pavement markings on the rest of the route. By the time we decided that we had had enough, somewhere around Glacière we had found 40 round river markers

 and 4 of the 7 square plaques which commemorated special points along the river, not to mention horrified the Parisians who witnessed my children tearing along the street in their attempts to be the first to find the next marker. There is a 5th plaque at Quai d'Austerlitz, which we missed because we were starting along the Canal des Victorins, and the others, I think were further along our path. Cherry wants to go back and follow the rest of the river, but I think that will have to wait for the next time that we spend a month in Paris.