Réservoir de Montsouris

The Réservoir de Montsouris hides behind a massive wall of ivy and stone on the edge of the park. It holds nearly two hundred thousand cubic meters of drinking water beneath a garden roof, serving a large portion of southern Paris. Eugène Belgrand designed this underground cathedral in the eighteen seventies to replace the city’s polluted well water. During the Siege of Paris in eighteen seventy, workers raced to finish the structure, fearing the city’s water supply would fail while the Prussian army circled.