Champ De Mars, Phantom Metro Station – Paris, France

The second of the elusive Parisian ghost stations to appear on this site. After a few obsessive attempts, I was finally lucky enough visit this great location and take a few photos. Enjoy.

If your interested in this, you might also want to check out posts on the other phantom metro stations in Paris; St Martin, Arsenal and Croix Rouge.

Like St Martin, this station was one of the metro stations doomed to permanent closure after the second world war due to it’s proximity to surrounding stations. Despite being unceremoniously converted into one huge extraction vent, the station is largely intact. As you may have guessed, like St Martin the lines that run through the station are still active. This makes exploration just that little bit trickier, but so much more fun…

I’m sure everyone who lives in Paris has at some time cursed the Parisian metro system and its lack of public toilets, especially when you know all the stations were originally built with filthy, but none the less, functional facilities. The toilets in active stations have long since been converted into signals rooms, staff facilities or storage, presumably due to the cost of upkeep for over 200 stations. So the only place you can find examples of the original toilets (like in the photo above) are in the abandoned stations. Interestingly; they are all squat style.

So if you ever need a toilet while in the Paris metro, think carefully about your nearest abandoned station, jump the tracks and start running. Or, if you are so inclined, follow the lead of the nearest hobo and piss on the tracks… just mind the third rail.

As mentioned earlier, the station has been converted into an extraction vent which makes it not only very dark but also very loud. Exploring in the dark has never been a problem, I can hide as well as anyone, but exploring with noise… you never know what is coming…

Just another of the joys of metro exploration.

Stay tuned for more, 6 months of Parisian exploration is burning a hole on my pocket…