You've probably walked past them without noticing, but some Parisian buildingfacades are just walls, with no inhabitants! Behind the sometimes Haussmannian decor are hidden not apartments, but useful technical stations, such as ventilation, electrical substations or urban data centers - all invisible! A real trompe-l'œil, which you can find in several arrondissements of Paris!
Facades worthy of the cinema, which come in very handy for the RATP, which in the 1980s had to install ventilation shafts for the RER, emptying the buildings from the inside without altering the facades.
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A few signs betray these real constructions which nevertheless have balconies: doors without handles or mechanisms (often metal), opaque or blackened windows, never opened, no doorbell or digicode... Yes, some doors are not made to be opened!
But some facades fool us, like that of 3 rue de l'Aqueduc, in the 10th arrondissement, where only the ground and second floors are ventilated! The upper floors, on the other hand, are well inhabited, and we even spotted a clotheshorse, thinking we'd hallucinated. There are also two other fake facades within a five-minute walk of this one, ideal for discovering several at once.
RATP ventilation
Electricity / EDF transformers
If you'd like to check it out, even if you don't have to go anywhere, take a look at the aerial view on Google Maps- some of them don't even have roofs, just gaping holes!
