This is awesome.
For a year from September 2005, under the nose of the Panthéon’s unsuspecting security officials, a group of intrepid “illegal restorers” set up a secret workshop and lounge in a cavity under the building’s famous dome. Under the supervision of group member Jean-Baptiste Viot, a professional clockmaker, they pieced apart and repaired the antique clock that had been left to rust in the building since the 1960s. Only when their clandestine revamp of the elaborate timepiece had been completed did they reveal themselves. “When we had finished the repairs, we had a big debate on whether we should let the Panthéon’s officials know or not,” said Lazar Klausmann, a spokesperson for the Untergunther. “We decided to tell them in the end so that they would know to wind the clock up so it would still work.
“The Panthéon’s administrator thought it was a hoax at first, but when we showed him the clock, and then took him up to our workshop, he had to take a deep breath and sit down.”
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weichi 11.27.07 at 6:50 am
Amazing. Paris must truly be a wonderful place to have people care about it so much.
bad Jim 11.27.07 at 7:47 am
The Guardian called it “a plot worthy of Dan Brown or Umberto Eco”, but a group that would build and operate a cinema, bar and restaurant beneath the Seine sounds more like something out of Thomas Pynchon.
joel turnipseed 11.27.07 at 7:52 am
… I was thinking Alan Moore. But, yeah, Pynchon would work, too. Honestly? This article just made me happy.
Dan 11.27.07 at 9:00 am
Underground cinema? Would that make them the same group as in this article from 2004, then?
Jasper Milvain 11.27.07 at 9:09 am
Wow.
yabonn 11.27.07 at 9:31 am
Dan,
The cinema thing is another group, but they know each other. Lots of people down there.
The Untergunthers did other, less spectacular renovations too, hope they do more.
bad Jim 11.27.07 at 9:35 am
It does sound like the same group. So there are bands of “cataphiles” roaming the catacombs. Could there be catamites just around the corner?
Isn’t that typical of Parisians, though? On my last visit I wasted my evenings following the foot traffic, trying to find where the crowds disappear at night, and concluded that everyone goes to the movies.
Cian 11.27.07 at 9:38 am
Fantastic story, though it seems a bit harsh on the administrator that he was sacked.
This kind of struck me though:
“Many of them were students in the Latin Quarter in the 80s and 90s, when it was popular to have secret parties in Paris’s network of tunnels. They have now grown up and become nurses or lawyers”
Boys become lawyers, and girls become nurses…
stet 11.27.07 at 9:59 am
They’ve got a website, apparently, and a logo: http://www.ugwk.eu/
yabonn 11.27.07 at 10:07 am
True, the article seem to be implying that. My source is someone who met them and talked to them about this. There may be different versions, or the guy didn’t remember well.
You can be a cataphile for a day if you want – there are organised visits of the catacombs (starting around Denfer, I think).
Jack Fear 11.27.07 at 2:10 pm
@ 2 & 3: Reminds me more of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil; public works as a guerrilla action!
a very public sociologist 11.27.07 at 3:36 pm
Jolly good show.
@Jack, that’s a great idea. I think I’ll start brightening my campus up by fixing paper leaves to all the trees, to help combat the affects of SAD.
ajay 11.27.07 at 4:44 pm
This kind of struck me though:
“Many of them were students in the Latin Quarter in the 80s and 90s, when it was popular to have secret parties in Paris’s network of tunnels. They have now grown up and become nurses or lawyersâ€
Boys become lawyers, and girls become nurses…
Or maybe “I talked to two of them for this article; one is a lawyer and one is a nurse”. But don’t let me get in the way of your outrage.
If you seriously think the Guardian is some sort of surviving pocket of sexist attitudes in the British media, you… well, you’re probably not from Britain, for a start.
Timothy Burke 11.27.07 at 5:07 pm
Wow, I completely agree: this story makes me giddy. It’s like sprinkling magic dust on reality.
Dan Drezner 11.27.07 at 5:40 pm
I’m with Jack Fear — my thoughts immediately ran to Robert DeNiro in Brazil.
rm 11.27.07 at 5:43 pm
Cian, the article didn’t say what gender the lawyers or the nurses were; they might all be male, or all female, for all you can tell. I took those titles to be metonyms for the professional middle-class.
And yes, wonderful news.
In the U.S., would they be prosecuted as terrorists? I think so — messing with a potential target, after all.
c.l. ball 11.27.07 at 5:51 pm
My memory of the Pantheon is a bit hazy. Where exactly is the clock if you are looking from the outside?
When I’m in that area of Paris I usually get consumed by the Musée de l’Institut du Monde Arabe or Musée national du Moyen Âge, and end up just skirting by the Sorbonne. (Since I don’t read French, all the bookstores by the Sorbonne make me feel like a cad.)
faff 11.27.07 at 6:09 pm
This is the kind of monkey-wrenching that we need more of!
novakant 11.27.07 at 7:32 pm
Many of them were students in the Latin Quarter in the 80s and 90s, when it was popular to have secret parties in Paris’s network of tunnels.
I’ve been to a party like that in the early 90s, cannot remember at all how I ended up (or rather down) there, but it was very atmospheric and friendly. Paris is full of little charming secrets like that.
Bruce Baugh 11.27.07 at 7:44 pm
This makes me thoroughly happy.
Populuxe 11.27.07 at 9:23 pm
sounds more like something out of Thomas Pynchon
Better yet, it sounds like The so-called utopia of the Centre Beaubourg: An interpretation.
thompsaj 11.27.07 at 10:08 pm
an artist did a similar thing (similar as a “guerilla public service”) in LA a few years ago, but, of course, that involved altering freeway signs to make them more useful.
thompsaj 11.27.07 at 10:09 pm
sorry, link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arroyo_Seco_Freeway#Citizen_involvement
wood turtle 11.28.07 at 1:33 am
That is a good story.
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