Petite Ceinture du 16e

A chain-link fence separates the neighborhood from a sunken ribbon of wild greenery and rusted rails. The Petite Ceinture is a circular railway line that once girded Paris, built in the middle of the nineteenth century to connect the city's main train stations. By nineteen thirty-four, passenger traffic stopped as the subway system became the preferred way to travel. Nature reclaimed the gravel beds and sleepers, turning the abandoned passage into a long, quiet corridor hidden beneath the street level of the sixteenth arrondissement.