Vintage Paris Metro Station Temporarily Uncovered During Renovation Work

Hello and bonjour! It is August 2022 and I'm at the metro station Marques d'Aumoi on line 12 in the north of Paris. And I've come here because of a tip-off from the Twitter account Métro de Paris Insolite, who is well worth a follow if you like this sort of thing. Because thanks to some renovation work that started at this station last week, workers from the RATP have temporarily uncovered some fantastic vintage metro signs, posters and adverts. That haven't been seen for more than half a century. In fact, if you're an expert in antique French posters and you can tell us exactly when these ones date from, please do let us know in the comments. But just using my own nerdy knowledge, this old metro map is from before the RER was created. It shows line 13 terminating at Saint-Lazare and line 7 bis is still part of line 7, which dates it to at least the mid-1960s if not earlier. Meanwhile, the original white-ish tiling and those beautiful intricate borders around the station signage are even older. They date right back to the days when line 12 was run by the independent Norse Sud company, which was only absorbed into the metro in 1931. What you are looking at is a little corner of transport history nerdvana. Unfortunately, it won't last long. If you've been in Paris for a while, you'll know this exact same thing happens once or twice every year. They'll renovate a station somewhere, take down the modern facades, uncover some amazing old stuff behind it, and you get these temporary unintentional metro museums. So if you'd like to visit this one, be quick! It is on line 12 right up in the north of Paris, not a million miles from Montmartre and the Sacré-Coeur, although do bear in mind this is not a touristy area. We're in a sort of unloved urban peninsula stuck between the tracks of the Gare du Nord and the Gare de l'Est. But if you can't make it this time, don't worry, there'll probably be another place just like this in a few months from now. And that's it for today. Just a quick video this one, but as always, thank you all for watching, and I'll see you soon.