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From the Louvre museum to the sculpted façade of Notre Dame to the quintessential six-story apartment buildings with their grey-beige blush, Paris is built of local limestone, extracted from quarries that thread beneath the capital like the holes of a Swiss cheese. But these tunnels have a culinary legacy, too. Within these catacombs, in dark, cavernous chambers, farmers once cultivated a button mushroom variety that bears the name of the French capital: the Paris mushroom.
The stone upon (and from) which Paris is built is known as Lutetian limestone, after the Roman name for Paris: Lutetia. While locals have used these natural resources since Gallo-Roman times, it wasn’t until the massive medieval churches (such as Notre Dame) were built that Parisians quarried underground—a tradition that continued for centuries as they expanded and beautified the city. Over time, they created another, cavernous city below the streets.
Parisians found uses for the quarries long after miners winched the last block of stone up through the deep wells. In the late 1700s, after several cave-ins at the Holy Innocents Cemetery, city officials disinterred what was left of the remains and transferred the bones to these underground tunnels. This set the stage for the ossuaries of the Catacombs of Paris, which now hold the remains of more than six million people, including prominent French revolutionaries. Two centuries later, the French Resistance used the abandoned quarries to organize the Liberation of Paris far from Nazi eyes. One lesser-known use? The cultivation of a unique species of mushroom.
Since the 17th century, gardeners grew what would become known as Paris mushrooms in the gardens at Versailles. King Louis XIV is said to have been a particular fan of what was then known as the “rosé des près” or “pink of the fields.” The name came from the mushroom’s color, which is oddly similar to that of Lutetian limestone. But in the 19th century, this culture moved underground.
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Parisians built apartment with limestone from quarries below and around the city. Photo from Daxis/CC BY-ND 2.0.
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