Joanna
Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> [Gets more fun as it goes on. I love the idea there was a secret
> cinema and restaurant under the Seine for years]
>
> http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/heritage/story/0,,2217212,00.html
>
> Monday November 26, 2007
> Guardian
>
> 'Cultural guerrillas' cleared of lawbreaking over secret workshop in
> Pantheon
>
> Undercover restorers fix Paris landmark's clock
>
> Emilie Boyer King in Paris
>
> It is one of Paris's most celebrated monuments, a neoclassical
> masterpiece that has cast its shadow across the city for more than
> two centuries.
>
> But it is unlikely that the Panthéon, or any other building in
> France's capital, will have played host to a more bizarre sequence
> of events than those revealed in a court last week.
>
> Four members of an underground "cultural guerrilla" movement known
> as the Untergunther, whose purpose is to restore France's cultural
> heritage, were cleared on Friday of breaking into the 18th-century
> monument in a plot worthy of Dan Brown or Umberto Eco.
>
> For a year from September 2005, under the nose of the Panthéon's
> unsuspecting security officials, a group of intrepid "illegal
> restorers" set up a secret workshop and lounge in a cavity under the
> building's famous dome. Under the supervision of group member
> Jean-Baptiste Viot, a professional clockmaker, they pieced apart and
> repaired the antique clock that had been left to rust in the
> building since the 1960s. Only when their clandestine revamp of the
> elaborate timepiece had been completed did they reveal themselves.
>
> "When we had finished the repairs, we had a big debate on whether we
> should let the Panthéon's officials know or not," said Lazar
> Klausmann, a spokesperson for the Untergunther. "We decided to tell
> them in the end so that they would know to wind the clock up so it
> would still work.
>
> "The Panthéon's administrator thought it was a hoax at first, but
> when we showed him the clock, and then took him up to our workshop,
> he had to take a deep breath and sit down."
>
> The Centre of National Monuments, embarrassed by the way the group
> entered the building so easily, did not take to the news kindly,
> taking legal action and replacing the administrator.
>
> Getting into the building was the easiest part, according to
> Klausmann. The squad allowed themselves to be locked into the
> Panthéon one night, and then identified a side entrance near some
> stairs leading up to their future hiding place. "Opening a lock is
> the easiest thing for a clockmaker," said Klausmann. From then on,
> they sneaked in day or night under the unsuspecting noses of the
> Panthéon's officials.
>
> "I've been working here for years," said a ticket officer at the
> Panthéon who wished to remain anonymous. "I know every corner of the
> building. And I never noticed anything."
>
> The hardest part of the scheme was carrying up the planks used to
> make chairs and tables to furnish the Untergunther's cosy squat cum
> workshop, which has sweeping views over Paris.
>
> The group managed to connect the hideaway to the electricity grid
> and install a computer connected to the net.
>
> Klausmann and his crew are connaisseurs of the Parisian underworld.
> Since the 1990s they have restored crypts, staged readings and plays
> in monuments at night, and organised rock concerts in quarries. The
> network was unknown to the authorities until 2004, when the police
> discovered an underground cinema, complete with bar and restaurant,
> under the Seine. They have tried to track them down ever since.
>
> But the UX, the name of Untergunther's parent organisation, is a
> finely tuned organisation. It has around 150 members and is divided
> into separate groups, which specialise in different activities
> ranging from getting into buildings after dark to setting up
> cultural events. Untergunther is the restoration cell of the
> network.
>
> Members know Paris intimately. Many of them were students in the
> Latin Quarter in the 80s and 90s, when it was popular to have secret
> parties in Paris's network of tunnels. They have now grown up and
> become nurses or lawyers, but still have a taste for the capital's
> underworld, and they now have more than just partying on their mind.
>
> "We would like to be able to replace the state in the areas it is
> incompetent," said Klausmann. "But our means are limited and we can
> only do a fraction of what needs to be done. There's so much to do
> in Paris that we won't manage in our lifetime."
>
> The Untergunther are already busy working on another restoration
> mission Paris. The location is top secret, of course. But the
> Panthéon clock remains one of its proudest feats.
>
> "The Latin Quarter is where the concept of human rights came from,
> it's the centre of everything. The Panthéon clock is in the middle
> of it. So it's a bit like the clock at the centre of the world."
>
> Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 20
> 07
>
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