This Sewer Museum Stinks, But It's Worth the Visit

The labyrinth of sewers winding its way beneath the Paris streets is as legendary as the city upstairs.The system dates to about 1370, and today includes more than 1,300 miles of sewers. Although the sewers have a very practical use, their description in stories such as Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables made them legendary.“Paris has another Paris under herself — a Paris of sewers, which has its streets, its crossings, its squares, its blind alleys, its arteries and its circulation, which is slime, minus the human form,” Hugo famously wrote.Although Hugo’s description of the sewers worked to set the scene of the story, the description is invaluable to historians