In 1981, a Parisian schoolboy was busy trying
to do something schoolboys the world over have been attempting for countless generations
- impress his mates. But this particular kid was more inventive
than most. He didn’t claim to have been on holiday
to Area 51, or to be the youngest person in history to become a black belt in karate. No, he claimed to enjoy breaking into places
he shouldn’t after dark. Nothing wrong with that - plenty of kids like
bending the rules when they get the chance. But as is often the way with childhood boasts,
the boy let bravado get the better him. Because he wasn’t talking about a few surreptitious
cigarettes in the car park of the local leisure centre. No, he claimed the next place on his list
for a little night-time excursion was the Panthéon, which just so happens to be one
of the most famous buildings in all of Paris. Built in the 18th century and originally a
church, the neoclassical marvel that is the Panthéon is steeped in history. It’s home to Léon Foucault’s famous pendulum
with which he completed the first ever experiment demonstrating the rotation of the earth. And today it’s used as a mausoleum, housing
the remains of some of France’s most celebrated citizens including Voltaire, Victor Hugo,
Alexandre Dumas, Louis Braille, and Marie Curie, who was born in Poland but became a
French citizen in later life after moving to Paris. So yeah - much like Ron Burgundy, the Panthéon
is kind of a big deal. The boy’s friends were quick to call what
was very obviously a bluff, but he refused to back down. Which is how he and a small group of friends
ended up sneaking out one night when the rest of the city was sleeping to attempt to get
inside one of Paris’ most famous landmarks. That should have been where this story ends,
with the kids repelled by locked doors and patrolling night-watchmen. This was the Panthéon, after all. But much to their surprise, getting inside
was a piece of cake. Being inside was equally breezy, and the group
spent the night exploring the utterly deserted national landmark to their heart’s content
without ever running into even a hint of security. By the time they finally made their way blearily
to bed in the early hours of the following morning, the same question had crystallised
in each of their minds: where next? In most cities their options would have been
severely limited. But as you’ll know if you watched my recent
video on the Catacombs - Paris is no ordinary city. The tunnels that lie hidden beneath its streets
are vast - at least 350 kilometres all told - and, to those who know where to look, they
offer secret access to the basements of private residences, government buildings, and national
monuments alike. In short, the Paris catacombs are an urban
explorer’s pulsating nocturnal emission. And, according to legend, it was during an
adventure in the catacombs that our group of teenagers stumbled across a narrow tunnel
packed with electrical cables, which they followed until eventually finding themselves
in the basement of what turned out to be the ministry of communications. Again, you’d be forgiven for thinking an
important government building like this would have been protected by laser sharks and tripwires
- OK, maybe not that, but at least the odd ageing guard snoozing on a stool somewhere. But it seems Parisians are awfully relaxed
when it comes to security, because the group were able to explore the basement of the building
at their leisure. And it was there, locked away in a dusty drawer,
that they were to make a discovery that would change the history of Paris’ underworld
forever - a set of maps charting the entirety of the catacombs. For a group of budding urban explorers, it
was the motherlode. People had been exploring the catacombs for
untold years, painstakingly mapping new areas and uncovering forgotten corners. But nobody alive had managed to build up the
kind of comprehensive overview that was contained in those pages. Secret entrances to the catacombs that had
been lost for generations, entire tunnel systems as yet unexplored, and, of course, underground
access points to many of Paris’ most famous landmarks. Armed with this sacred knowledge, Les UX,
as the group of friends would come to be known, have been causing absolute mayhem in Paris
ever since. Fast-forward to today and Les UX, which is
short for ‘the urban experiment’, have grown into a fully-fledged underground organisation
in both the literal and the figurative sense. Figuratively underground because they operate
under a cloak of extreme secrecy, and literally underground because it’s their unique knowledge
of the Catacombs that has allowed them to pull off the kinds of stunts usually reserved
for plot lines in Hollywood blockbusters. By the way - if the name ‘Les UX’ sounds
familiar, that might be because I briefly touched on the organisation in my video about
the Catacombs. These were the guys who built an entire cinema
complex deep beneath the streets of Paris complete with bar and restaurant, where they
are thought to have held film festivals and private screenings for months, maybe even
years before French police eventually stumbled across the setup during a training exercise. But while building a secret cinema in a cave
system below one of the world’s great cities is pretty damn cool, it’s just the tip of
Les UX iceberg. So, what would you do if someone gave you
what amounted to a skeleton key granting access to some of the most famous buildings in the
world through a series of little-known secret entrances? This is Paris we’re talking about here - pretty
much everywhere you look there are priceless works of art hanging on gallery walls, cellars
stocked with dusty bottles of vintage wine, and museums chock full of rare artefacts. I don’t know about you, but I’d be robbing
the place blind - you wouldn’t be able to move in the Thoughty2 residence for Monets
and half-drunk bottles of Cheval Blanc. But not Les UX. In fact, over the last few decades, far from
stealing everything in sight, they’ve kind of been doing the opposite. You see, they’re of the opinion French officials
have - at times - been a little negligent in their attitude towards the country’s
rich heritage, focusing tax dollars only on the upkeep of big-ticket items like the Louvre
and the Eiffel Tower, while letting less well-known sites slowly deteriorate or even fall into
ruin. So, instead of pulling off a series of art
heists worthy of the Thomas Crown affair, Les UX decided to become the invisible champions
of Paris’ lost heritage, both above ground and below. They’re responsible for secret restoration
of at least one forgotten metro station, a 12th century crypt, a 100-year-old French
government bunker, and a World War 2 air raid shelter. Of course, that kind of work takes both manpower
and expertise, and Les UX has grown considerably since those early days when it were just a
group of friends having a bit of fun. Thought to be made up of at least 150 members
today, the group is now split across several different units, each with its own special
skills and equally special name. There’s the Mouse House, who focus on infiltration,
the Untergunther, who carry out covert restorations of heritage sites around the city, and La
Mexicaine De Perforation, who were responsible for the secret cinema complex as well as countless
other excavations in the catacombs. But while the names are playful, Les UX are
deadly serious in their mission of stepping in where the state is failing to take care
of Paris’ rich history, as well as reclaiming lost and forgotten spaces for creative expression,
usually in the catacombs themselves, where they regularly host secret art exhibitions
and film screenings. In 2006, a lone thief managed to waltz inside
the Parisian Museum of Modern art, helping himself to paintings by the likes of Picasso,
Modigliani, and Matisse before escaping entirely undetected. If you read the newspaper coverage at the
time, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was some kind of elaborate heist pulled off
by sophisticated international art thieves. But as we’ve seen, security at some of Paris’
most famous landmarks isn’t always quite what you’d expect, and in reality, the theft
was pulled off by some bloke who ambled up to the Museum in the dead of night, broke
one padlock and smashed a single window. That was literally all it took to grant the
guy access to hundreds of millions of Euro worth of paintings. The robbery was nothing to do with Les UX
- as I’ve said, they’re in the business of preserving heritage, not pinching it - but
they have been doing their bit to try and ensure similar robberies never happen again
by keeping an eye on museum security across the city and stepping in when they find issues. Collectively they’re like French Batman,
but instead of causing millions of Euros of property damage and hospitalising just about
everyone in sight to stop a lone baddie, Les UX prefer to fix what’s broken and take
a more intelligent approach to vigilantism. One member carried out a detailed audit of
one of Paris’ leading museums over a series of weeks, finding multiple problems with the
level of security she observed. She wrote a full report on the various issues,
explaining the myriad ways she could have broken into the museum and made off with some
swag had she chosen to do so. When she’d finished, presumably both to
save on postage and to ably demonstrate her point, she infiltrated the office of the museum’s
head of security in the middle of the night and left the report on his desk. You’d think the man would have been grateful
for the help when he came in next morning, if perhaps a little embarrassed by where it
came from. But no. He wasn’t grateful. He was angry. So angry, in fact, he went straight to the
police to press charges. Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth. The police declined to pursue the matter. Without a doubt Les UX’s crowning achievement
- or at least the crowning achievement among the ones we actually know about - took place
back where it all started - at the Panthéon - which, as it turns out, had become something
of a second home to the members of Les UX over the years. Since that first night, the group had been
back many, many times - and not just to wander around admiring the nineteenth century architectural
flourishes. As crazy as it sounds, not content simply
with infiltrating one of the city’s most famous landmarks, Les UX members had for years
been using the cavernous interior as their own private after-hours exhibition centre,
hosting art installations, staging plays, and filming screenings there in the dead of
night, then clearing everything away and disappearing without a trace before the tourists turned
up the next day. If you find that hard to believe you don’t
have to take my word for it, because Les UX kindly went to the trouble of producing a
short film of their exploits called ‘Panthéon, User Guide’, in which you can watch a Les
UX member in an Untergunther t-shirt enjoying a pleasant evening rollerblading around a
deserted Pantheon before other team members arrive to rig up a huge projector for a private
screening of American Psycho - all without staff at the mausoleum ever being any the
wiser. It was probably during one of these events
in November of 2005 that someone decided to go and take a look at one of the Panthéon’s
greatest treasures, an antique Wagner clock, which was built in 1850 to preside over an
prominent entrance within the building, but had been allowed to fall into disrepair. One of Les UX’s members happened to be a
qualified watchmaker for renowned French horological house Breguet, and on taking a look at the
piece he discovered it wasn’t simply old and dirty - someone had deliberately sabotaged
the movement, presumably to save them the trouble of winding it every day. If the Pantheon administration weren’t going
to look after such a precious piece under their care, it was time for the Untergunther,
Les UX’s specialist restoration unit, to step in. But this was no simple spruce-up of a forgotten
crypt beneath the city. The Wagner clock was an important artefact
in one of Paris’ most popular buildings, visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists
each year. The clock’s mechanism was large and complicated,
and it would need to be taken apart and thoroughly cleaned, with the damaged parts repaired or
replaced. And seeing as the work would have to be carried
out in secret during the night, they were going to need months to complete the job,
not to mention plenty of equipment - more than they could simply bring in and out every
night. Put all of these things together and it should
have been an impossible job. But the Untergunther were more than a match
for it. To kick things off, they built themselves
a fully functioning secret workshop in a cavity high up in the Panthéon, hidden beneath the
great dome, which they kitted out with armchairs, bookshelves and a small bar. And because they love a silly name, they dubbed
it the Unter and Gunther Winter Kneipe - German for ‘the Unter and Gunther Winter boozer’. They even set up a small vegetable garden
on a terrace overlooking the city, because getting your 5-a-day shouldn’t be compromised
even if you are busy covertly restoring an ageing artefact right under the nose of the
French government. The restoration took almost a year all told,
with the clock painstakingly restored to its former glory. Typically, Les UX act in complete secrecy
- we have no way of knowing how many such restorations they’ve made across the city. But this time was different. After all, in order for their hard work to
be worthwhile, somebody was going to have to keep the Wagner clock wound. So, for once breaking protocol, Les UX surfaced,
arranging a meeting with the administrator of the Panthéon to tell him the good news. You’re probably thinking the man was absolutely
delighted to hear an important part of the Panthéon’s history had been repaired completely
free of charge by a horological expert. And rumour has it he was - for all of about
fifteen seconds, at which point he didn’t so much look his gift horse in the mouth but
attempted to get it sent straight to the glue factory. Apparently coming to the conclusion the whole
thing was going to make him look incompetent – after all, not one member of his staff
reported seeing anything out of the ordinary during the entire year it had taken for the
team to restore the clock - the man promptly initiated legal action against those involved,
with prosecutors seeking up to a year in jail on top of almost €50,000 in damages, despite
the fact Les UX had invested some €4000 of their own money on the restoration. The Panthéon even hired another clockmaker
to undo the Untergunther’s repairs, although he refused to actively damage the mechanism,
deactivating it instead. Unfortunately for the pantheon administration,
it seems there are no laws in France against secretly repairing clocks in the middle of
the night, so instead they went after Les UX for something else entirely. Inside a year, four members of the Untergunther
found themselves in the Paris court of justice not on charges of breaking and entering, or
of repairing a priceless clock, but for apparently breaking a lock somewhere on the Panthéon
grounds. It was a ridiculous case in many, many ways,
not least because there was absolutely no proof Untergunther members had broken the
lock in the first place. But thankfully, the French legal system came
through with flying colours on this one. After hearing the trial, the judge deliberated
for only 20 minutes before revealing his verdict - not guilty, with one of the prosecutors
quoted as calling the whole case ‘stupid’. My grasp of French law is pretty basic, but
I think the judge came to his decision based on reasoning along the lines of ‘we don’t
guillotine the good guys, Mon Amie.’ Moron amie, more like. In the kind of two finger salute they’re
now famous for, Les UX infiltrated the Panthéon once more in the wake of the trial, reactivating
the Wagner clock so that it would chime for a few days over the Christmas period, before
returning once again to remove the component they’d repaired, just in case the current
administration hired anyone else to break it. What’s so intriguing about Les UX is that
everything we know about them - the remarkable restoration of the Pantheon clock, the mysterious
security reports designed to protect important art galleries, the infiltration and the subterranean
events - these things just scratch the surface of their clandestine activities beneath Paris. They are, after all, an underground organisation,
and they don’t publicise almost anything they do. What we do know about them has often come
out inadvertently when someone they’ve tried to help has reacted with about as much grace
as Bambi after fifteen pints of Newcastle Brown Ale. On the rare occasions Les UX members have
spoken to the press, they’ve always hinted at other, equally ambitious projects they’re
working on that never make it into the public domain. But if you think all of this sounds like kind
of a good time, I’m afraid there’s no easy way of joining Les UX. Just to add a little more to their mystique,
becoming a member is by invitation only, and only those who are already involved in ‘Les
UX-like activities’ will ever receive an invite. So yeah, if you want to join, you basically
have to go to Paris, get yourself underground sharpish, and start causing all sorts of mischief
until some suave looking stranger taps you on the shoulder in a coffee shop and teaches
you the secret handshake. Well, I guess that’s my summer holiday sorted. Thanks for Watching.
