La Petite Ceinture du 19ᶱ (accès Gaston Tessier / Curial)

The Petite Ceinture was once a vital industrial artery, a circular railway completed in the eighteen sixties to unite the fragmented rail networks of Paris. Before this belt line existed, travelers arriving at one of the city's major stations had to cross Paris by carriage to reach a different terminal. This line changed that by creating a seamless loop, allowing both passengers and freight to bypass the crowded city streets entirely. At its peak during the Universal Exposition of nineteen hundred, the tracks carried nearly forty million passengers in a single year, functioning as a high-speed precursor to the modern subway.