Simply adjoining to the tracks and platform for Line 14, vacationers arriving at Gare de Lyon Métro Station are greeted to a fairly unusual sight. Varied tropical vegetation from all around the world lie underground in a 400-square-meter backyard, utterly uncharacteristic of Paris. Whereas Line 14 as a complete is supposed to have a futuristic and ethereal really feel, this backyard in what would in any other case be a barren concrete house is unquestionably the spotlight of all of it.
Initially, the house was meant to be an entrance to a deliberate transit museum, which by no means got here to be. As an alternative, it was designed to make use of it for a backyard experiment when Line 14 opened in 1998. A number of occasions a day, the vegetation are watered by misters, full with sounds simulating a thunderstorm. The vegetation get a break from the bogus gentle at night time when the backyard goes darkish, despite the fact that trains hold operating till the early morning. Regardless of these measures to simulate a pure atmosphere, there have been issues that mud collects on the leaves and that the vegetation are in any other case not tailored to underground life.
