The dandelions give an idea of the scale of this tiny door, set at the bottom of a towering wall below the metro line.  Is it the access to a broom cupboard or the entrance to a secret network of underground tunnels?  The door’s giving nothing away.

Once you start looking, there are mysterious doors all over the city.  Sometimes there’s a label or inscription, which may simply add to the mystery, but often the door is completely blank. Those who need to know where it leads do, the rest of us must use our imagination. There’s an unwritten story behind each of these doors.

 

A door for looking at water. A network of aqueducts, drawing water from springs and natural underground aquifers, supplied Paris with drinking water from the 15th to 19th centuries. A ‘regard’ allowed those responsible for a particular supply to check its flow and purity.
The quays of the Seine were once lined with warehouses built into the walls; now they are lined with bricked up doorways and mysterious doors.
As roads have been closed on the lower quays and the waterside is developed as public green space, long-closed doors are reopened and the the hidden space behind is put to new uses. There’s no clue of the use planned for this one yet.
A ’round the side of a van’ shot of a strange door in the Marais. Something very heavy has been dragged round the corner of the door over the years, wearing away the stone.
This door used to be wider but it’s also been taller. Which came first, and why?
A doorway that’s no longer an entrance….
and one that never has been. There’s nothing behind the door at 1bis rue Chapon, installed early one Saturday morning in 2006 by Les Spécialistes.

 

Click on any door to view the gallery.

A post for Thursday Doors.