Butte-aux-Cailles

The Butte-aux-Cailles remains a village-like enclave in the heart of Paris, defying the city's standard architectural layout. Its unique, low-profile landscape exists because the ground beneath your feet is honeycombed with old limestone quarries. These underground cavities were too unstable to support the heavy, uniform stone buildings commissioned by Baron Haussmann during his massive renovation of Paris in the nineteenth century, leaving this neighborhood with a rare collection of small houses and narrow, winding streets.