Tracing the Bievre: The lost river of Paris. Pictures, maps, and a live video replay (members only)

Last week I hosted a Bievre River Adventure Walk and fifteen Patreon members joined me and Lina for the exploration. The idea was that it wasn’t so much a guided walk by me, more of a joint adventure where we could all discover it together and see a lesser-known side of Paris.

Before long, it will be a podcast episode and probably a video… but in the meantime, I wanted to share the fun with the Patrons who missed out, so here’s a look at it all. Enjoy 🙂

What happened?

The exploratory walk began at 12 noon on Wednesday Feb 1st at the fountain in Parc Kellerman (map). From there, we walked along the length of the ancient Bievre River, which was totally buried and hidden about 100 years ago. We were searching for hints of river-formed architecture, curved streets, buildings, and ancient castles.

We were especially searching for anything Bievre-related including information plaques, medallions on the ground, restaurants or shops called Bievre, Metro stations… anything and everything. There was also a surprise post office stop at the end, more on that later.

The route

Here is a rough google maps look at the walk. It says it’s just a 1 hour 1 minute walk from the park at the start to the post office… but due to stopping, backtracking, sneaking into courtyards, reading plaques… it took us about 2.5 hours.

Can you see on the map the curves? That’s essentially river bends. So fascinating to think how the city was formed by this old channel. On the pic below you can see one road (with a tower!) where the curve is particularly visible still, today, rue Berbier du Metz.

River Map

The map below shows where the river ran. Sometimes it crossed through what are now buildings, sometimes it was paved over and turned into roads. There are several “arms” to the river, man-made or natural. The natural one is marked by medallions on the ground with the words “bras mort” while the other is called “bras vif”. We followed a mix of both. Note: On the map below, at the final confluence of the river, we stopped following it to head for the post office.

Video replay

I live-streamed a one hour segment of the walk, you can watch the replay here. Because it’s on a hidden link, only members can see this video (I can’t even embed it here, it only works via the link above).

Medallions

At the end of the walk, I asked all 15 people how many medallions they think we spotted in total. No one kept an absolute count, and answers ranged from 40 to 120. I think it’s safe to say there are around 60, but it’s also safe to say we missed many. Here’s a closer look. They were incredibly easy to miss.

Windmills and rue Mouffetard

If you’re thinking to do this walk, the biggest concentration of river plaques is at the south end of rue Mouffetard where several windmills once stood. In that area was a big sort of crossroads of river channels. Further up the hill are some shop signs suggesting a river was once nearby.

Archway

A short walk up the hill and then down the other side took us to the post office on rue Cardinal Lemoine, which opens its cellar for curious tourists to look at an old underground tunnel/bridge which once let the Bievre river flow through the Philippe Auguste Wall. They only open it once a month, at 2.30pm on the first Wednesday of the month.

These are two interests of mine in one (the wall and the river), and I’d never been down there, so it was quite a thrill to find it.

Final thoughts

After the post office, we walked a few more minutes to rue de Bievre (!) where a restaurant was once called La Bievre (its name has recently changed) and we all enjoyed a drink.

And that was that! I’ll share more thoughts on everything soon, but the gist is: It was really fun to see another part of town, and the scavenger hunt was quite enjoyable. However, there’s not much to find. If you had to choose a scavenger hunt, do the Philippe Auguste Wall!

Thanks to all who walked, watched, or read this post! More walks like this are planned, but if you’re in the mood, I’ve done another similar blog post for the time I walked the Philippe Auguste Wall. You can read it here (also members’ only).