Ghost stations of the Paris Métro

Ghost stations of the Paris Métro are stations that have been closed to the public (or never opened) and are not used in commercial service. For historical, geographical or economical reasons, many stations on the Paris Métro have been closed or never opened, made inaccessible and lie unused, conferring a sense of mystery over Parisians and sparking interest of the Urban explorers.

The majority of these ghost stations were closed when France entered World War II in September 1939, with some closed ever since. Others have been reused or disappeared completely as the network evolved. Five stations were constructed but never actually used, and today still lie inaccessible to the public. Three others were designed but were never serviced by a Métro line.

Two stations on the Paris Métro were constructed but never used, and have no pedestrian acces apart from another train : Porte Molitor and Haxo.^[1][2] Only during rare special service these stations can be visited.

Porte Molitor was constructed in 1923 on a shuttle linking lines 9 and 10 and was originally intended to service the Parc des Princes and Roland Garros stadiums on match nights.^[1][2] Logistics of this service became too complex, however, and the project was abandoned before the pedestrian accesses to the station were constructed. The tracks today serve as train garages.^[3]

A special tunnel, the voie des Fêtes, links the Place des Fêtes to the Porte des Lilas with an intermediary station called Haxo, constructed in 1921.^[4] This tunnel was intended to connect lines 3 and 7 (now 3bis and 7bis). The tunnel was never used as it was decided to run a shuttle service between the stations of each of these lines. This shuttle proved unpopular with passengers and service stopped in 1939. Haxo has never been used for passenger transport, and there is no pedestrian access. However, there is a proposal to merge lines 3bis and 7bis into a new line, which if completed would mean completion and opening of the station to the public.^[5] As both tunnels are currently used by RATP for special purposes - MF 88 train maintenance on the Voie Navette and Movie shootings on Voie des Fêtes - , the merger project would also imply finding (or creating) new underground tracks for movie purposes before opening the hypothetical Métro line 20.

Three other stations were planned and pre-dug as part of past long-term extensions that since got dropped : Défense - Élysées, Défense - Michelet and the original Orly Airport station initially meant for an extension of the Villejuif branch of Line 7. All three had their space reserved for future construction, yet only the first two were built. Not a single rail was laid, however.

At the beginning of World War II, the French government put into action a plan that called for reduced service on the Métro network; specifically, it closed all but 85 stations. The majority of stations that were closed reopened in the following years, however some lightly trafficked and therefore unprofitable stations remained closed for a longer time.

Varenne (line 14, now line 13) reopened on 24 December 1962, followed by the station Bel-Air (line 6) on 7 January 1963.^[6] Rennes (line 12) and Liège (line 13) reopened to the public after about 30 years of being closed, on 20 May 1968 and 16 September 1968 respectively.^[6][7] These stations were subject to abbreviated schedules: they closed at 8 PM on weekdays and Saturdays, and did not open on Sundays and holidays.^[7] Rennes returned to normal service schedules on 6 September 2004 and Liège, the last station on an abbreviated schedule of the network, returned to normal hours on 4 December 2006.^[8]

Cluny (line 10) remained forgotten for almost half a century, however the construction of the train station Saint-Michel - Notre-Dame to service line B of the RER caused it to be reopened in order to provide a connection to line 10. It was reopened to the public on 17 February 1988, the day on which the RER line B station was opened. The station was renamed Cluny – La Sorbonne.^[4]

The station Saint-Martin was closed in 1939, opened after the Liberation and closed again. This station was situated on the Grands Boulevards and therefore served as an important access point, however it was eventually closed again because of its proximity—less than 100 metres (110 yd)—to the neighbouring station Strasbourg – Saint-Denis.^[2]

Three stations have remained closed since 1939: Arsenal (line 5), Champ de Mars (line 8), and Croix-Rouge (line 10). These stations were also reopened after the Liberation of France, but later analysis in 1946 deemed these stations too unprofitable to remain open, and the stations were closed again, never to reopen. The fourth one, Cluny, was saved and reopened when RER B came by and offered a far better connection to line 10 than neighbouring station Odéon.^[4]

Three other open stations contain unused platforms (that is they are inaccessible to the public):

• Porte des Lilas – Cinéma : the Porte des Lilas station on the Voie Navette shuttle connecting lines 3bis and 7bis, now used for movie and ad shootings.
• Pré-Saint-Gervais, where the eastern platform is used for MF 88 rolling stock maintenance.
• Invalides, where a line 8 platform lies unused after renovations made to the station. It is located behind the gates of the RATP recruitment office located right on the line 8 platform towards Créteil.^[4]

Unused platforms of the first two might be reused when/if the Bis lines merging project is put in motion, and the second platform of Pré-Saint-Gervais as soon as the MF 88 train is retired in profit of the incoming MF 19, a cascading expected by 2026.

As a result of the expansion of line 3 to Gallieni, the station Martin Nadaud was integrated into the station Gambetta. The station still exists today: it is situated in the extension of the Gambetta station in the direction of Pont de Levallois, at a site surrounded by a gate, with its platforms being repurposed, and now they are used as walkways from the original Martin Nadaud entrances to the new Gambetta station.^[4]

Gare du Nord USFRT, the old terminus of line 5 until 1942 and situated on the boulevard de Denain, became a ghost station after the expansion of line 5 to Pantin, which involved the construction of a new station under the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis. It has since served as the center for training RATP drivers, alongside the rail connection transfer between lines 2 and 5.^[4]

The station Olympiades was used as a service depot for line 14 before the expansion of the tunnel to Maison Blanche and the creation of a new service depot.^[9]

The old terminus loop of line 3 at Villiers was also turned into a training center for the RATP, just outside Parc Monceau.^[4]

Four stations have been moved during the construction and extension of lines:^[4]

• Porte de Versailles: old terminus of line A (Now Line 12) of the former Nord-Sud Company, at the front of the current station towards Paris. Old tiling is still visible, and this explains the offset of the actual station's platforms.
• Victor Hugo was originally built right in the curve, then moved a few hundred meters to the east towards Étoile due to new rolling stock with elongated cars, proving too long for the original station's platforms, which were short and tightly curved. The old station platforms are still accessible to RATP staff, and visible for passengers when the trains leave the station towards Dauphine.
• Loop of Porte Maillot: old terminus of line 1 before its extension to Pont de Neuilly. At one point, one of its platforms served as a stateroom for the RATP. Since the beginning of 2007, the loop has been undergoing renovations to become an extra service depot for the future MP 05 rolling stock, as part of the line 1 automation.
• Les Halles: the station was reconstructed in 1977 a few dozen metres towards the east (parallel to the old station) in order to allow for a better connection with the newly constructed RER station. It does not use any part of the old station.

Three other stations had been planned, outside the neighbourhood of La Défense and the Orly Airport, but have never been served by any lines. Two are situated under the business district, and another under the southern part of the Orly Airport. These stations consist only of a concrete box, void of any further development.^[4]

Since the expansion of line 1 to Pont de Neuilly in 1937, the future expansion to La Défense had already been considered. Outside of the flagstone pedestrian walks, which include a number of platforms and underground parking from the 1960s and 1970s, the Établissement public pour l'aménagement de la région de la Défense (EPAD) reserved two areas destined to hold two future Métro stations on the axis intended to be served by the line. La Défense – Michelet and Élysées – La Défense are situated under the neighbourhood of Michelet and the apartment building Élysée Défense, respectively.^[4]

However, as a result of the planning for the expansion, which was not completed until the 1990s, the complexity and the cost of an under-river crossing in this area was judged to be too prohibitive to complete. Instead, the crossing of the Seine was achieved by passing over the pont de Neuilly, and not in a tunnel as had previously been planned. Thus, the two areas reserved for these stations are not serviced and remain accessible only via a trap door five floors below ground level in an underground parking lot. The current tunnel (and Esplanade station) was realized in part by the number of lanes on the A14 autoroute, which were reduced to 2×2 instead of 3×3, as had previously been planned.^[10]

Orly-Sud was conceived at the same time as terminal 4 by its architect, Henri Vicariot, and was dug out under the terminal building in preparation of a future expansion of Métro line 7 to this location. However, no such expansion ever occurred, and the automated Métro shuttle Orlyval instead opened in 1997, above ground, without using the location that had been reserved for the Métro station underneath. Line 14 used a new station, which is highly likely to be shared with upcoming line 18, and the original station now sits as a simple box for more than half a century.^[4]

• List of Paris Métro stations

• Guerrand, Roger-Henri (1999). L'aventure du métropolitain [The Métropolitain Adventure] (in French). Paris: La découverte. ISBN 2-7071-1642-4.
• Hallsted-Baumert, Sheila; Gasnault, François; Zuber, Henri (1997). Métro-Cité : le chemin de fer métropolitain à la conquête de Paris, 1871–1945 (in French). Régie autonome des transports parisiens, Archives de Paris. Paris: musées de la ville de Paris. ISBN 2-87900-374-1.
• Lamming, Clive (2001). Métro insolite [Unusual Métro] (in French). Paris: Parigramme. ISBN 2-84096-190-3.
• Robert, Jean (1983). Robert, Jean (ed.). Notre Métro [Our Métro] (in French) (2nd ed.). Paris.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Tricoire, Jean (1999). La Vie du Rail (ed.). Un siècle de métro en 14 lignes. De Bienvenüe à Météor [A Century of Métro in 14 Lines. From Bienvenüe to Météor] (in French). Paris: La vie du rail. ISBN 2-902808-87-9.
• Zuber, Henri (1996). Le patrimoine de la RATP [The Heritage of the RATP] (in French). Charenton-le-Pont: Flohic éditions. ISBN 2-84234-007-8.

• Phantom Train Stations — articles with description and photographs of ghost stations of Paris metro
• Tourists throng Paris's 'ghost' metro stations - Travel article describing a tour of the Ghost Stations of the Paris Metro
• Metro magic - Travel article by Andrew Martin of a tour of several abandoned Metro stations