Regard du Bernage

The Regard du Bernage is a small stone structure, no taller than a person, tucked behind a metal gate with a weathered, rectangular chimney rising from its roof. It marks the entrance to a subterranean gallery that once fed the ancient Belleville aqueduct. This pipe system supplied water to medieval Paris, tapping into local springs that bubbled up from the hillside. A seventeenth-century mapmaker once noted that workers frequently navigated these dark, cramped tunnels to clear sediment and keep the city drinking.