The Musée des Égouts de Paris takes visitors into working galleries beneath the Alma bridge, where street plaques, cleaning tools, and models reveal how Paris built and maintains its water and sewer systems.
Quick facts
Eugène Belgrand took charge of Paris’s water service in 1854 and later directed the city’s water and sewer service.
Public tours of the sewers began during the 1867 Universal Exposition, guided by sewer workers in boats or wagons.
A 1894 law required Paris property owners to connect toilets to the public sewer.
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At the Musée des Égouts de Paris, street names continue underground. Small plaques mark the corners of galleries, translating the familiar city grid into a working map below the pavement. The museum, beside the Alma bridge in Paris’s 7th arrondissement, lets visitors enter a short section of this infrastructure and see how a capital moves water, waste, and maintenance through its foundations.
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