Last ‘Frigo’ in Paris: Urban Plan Threatens Piece of City’s History

Hidden under a drab industrial zone in eastern Paris — wedged between the Seine and a tangle of motorway slip roads and office buildings — lies the city’s last natural fridge, or frigo, as the French call it.

Almost 15,000 square meters of cavernous stone vaults extend underneath the former train station Gare de la Rapée in Paris’s 12th arrondissement, an area that was once the beating heart of France’s wine trade. Wine vendors and other businesses used the vast underground galleries to store goods from the 19th century, thanks in part to an unusual feature of the site. The “Tunnel des Artisans,” as it’s known, is a natural refrigerator because of the thickness of its stone walls that keep the internal temperature a cool 12-14°C (54-57 Fahrenheit), without electricity, even in the summer.