Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The Musée des Égouts de Paris originates from the guided tours organized during the World Exposition of 1867 under the Second Empire. These routes, intended to show the modernity of the capital, attracted a varied clientele: bourgeois, engineers and even crowned heads. Visitors took vans fired by sewerers or boats, exploring collectors such as Sevastopol or Rivoli. Eugène Belgrand, director of water and sewers from 1867 to 1878, had special wagons built to accommodate up to ten people, transforming these visits into a real phenomenon of public curiosity.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the tour evolved with the arrival of the metro: two sections were proposed via collectors of the Centre or Petits-Champs. The routes combined boat and electric wagon, such as the one linking the dock of the Louvre to Arts and Trades. During the Second World War, the sewers, which became a strategic network under military occupation, sheltered resistors (such as the Rol-Tanguy PC in Denfert-Rochereau) and served as shelters. The visits resumed in 1946 from Place de la Concorde, with a boat trip to La Madeleine.

In 1975, the museum took its present form in the Alma factory, abandoning the course by boat for a permanent exhibition over 500 meters of galleries. Redesigned in 1989, it welcomed nearly 95,000 visitors in 2007, before a renovation closure in 2018. Reopened in October 2021 after work of 2 million euros, it now offers an accessible route, including a reception pavilion and educational spaces on waste management. The museum remains vulnerable to the floods of the Seine, closing as soon as the level reaches the foot of the Zouave of the bridge of the Alma.

The current course, which lasts 45 to 60 minutes, runs through working galleries such as the Brunesseau gallery (named after the inspector who mapped the sewers in the 19th century) or the Belgrand gallery, dedicated to historical curing tools. Other spaces pay tribute to figures such as Hugues Aubriot (creator of the first vaulted sewer in 1370) or Adolphe Mille (promoter of agricultural water purification). The museum combines technical history and contemporary issues, recalling that sewers are not garbage.

The Alma factory, the heart of the museum, illustrates the operation of a siphon and a node of the network managed by SIAAP. Visitors discover destabilization ponds, curing valves, and pneumatic clocks, while panels explain the risks associated with sewers and the role of sewerers. The average temperature of 13°C and constant humidity recall the real conditions of this unitary network, gravitational and visitable, essential to the remediation of Paris since the 19th century.

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