Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: 'Do not,' it said, 'try to find us.' 'The whole thing ran off a professionally installed electricity system and there were at least three phone lines down there.' 'There were bottles of whisky and other spirits behind a bar, tables and chairs, a pressure-cooker for making couscous,' the spokesman said.

None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said.Ī smaller cave next door had been turned into an informal restaurant and bar. There the police found a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, 'clearly designed to frighten people off,' the spokesman said.įurther along, the tunnel opened into a vast 400 sq metre cave some 18m underground, 'like an underground amphitheatre, with terraces cut into the rock and chairs'. Members of the force's sports squad, responsible - among other tasks - for policing the 170 miles of tunnels, caves, galleries and catacombs that underlie large parts of Paris, stumbled on the complex while on a training exercise beneath the Palais de Chaillot, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower.Īfter entering the network through a drain next to the Trocadero, the officers came across a tarpaulin marked: Building site, No access.īehind that, a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. 'There were two swastikas painted on the ceiling, but also celtic crosses and several stars of David, so we don't think it's extremists.

'We have no idea whatsoever,' a police spokesman said. Officers admit they are at a loss to know who built or used one of Paris's most intriguing recent discoveries.

Police in Paris have discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum-restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital's chic 16th arrondissement.

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