Name: Before and after: The lost river of Paris | BBC Global | BBC Global
Uploaded: 2026-01-13T21:01:30.000Z
Duration: 4 min 37 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

When we think of Paris, we usually think of the Seine.

But did you know that once the city had another river called the Bievre?

It is very hard to imagine that the Bieve used to flow here.

Today we will rediscover this ghost river.

There was this man, Jehan Gobelin, who gave his name to this neighborhood.

In 1443, Jehan Gobelin decided to settle down here and to create his dying workshop.

Imagine, from the Middle Ages, weavers, tanners, rag pickers, dyers, and

even butchers, they all relied on the Guelph's water.

We can see all the colors, especially the red color, which made this workshop very famous.

And just behind this window, the Bieve used to flow.

We don't usually think of Paris as a small village, but please look around me.

Look at all these charming little houses.

Here we are in the 13th district, at the Butte au Caille.

It sits on a hill where the Bieve flowed.

In the past, it used to be watermills, it used to be fields.

In the 18th century, the bieve river became an open sewer, full of toxic dyes, animal remains, and

So it was high time to take some actions.

And the 19th century, the Baron Haussman reshaped and modernized the city of Paris with its tall buildings, new gardens, new boulevards.

But this little corner of Paris remained untouched.

Because of the steep slopes and because of the soft soil, it was impossible here to build heavy construction.

And by the way, this district, La Buto Caille, is very famous worldwide for street arts.

Here we are at the amazing Chateau de Versailles.

Surprisingly, this Chateau de Versailles has a direct connection with the Bieve.

In the 17th century, the French King Louis XIV was so extravagant that he wanted to create fountains that would never stop flowing.

So engineers started to search for suits of water, and they succeeded in diverting the Bieve.

We are standing right now on the banks of the Seine at Austerlitz.

It's somewhere around here that the Bieve used to end its journey outside Paris.

Some towns have reopened some parts of the Bieve.

The Bieve river was fully buried in 1912, but

its traces are everywhere, shaping the cities in ways most people never notice.