The Ghost Subway Station in Paris Where Films Come to Life

Meryl Streep as Julia Child, on her way to meet a famous cookbook writer in Julie & Julia. Audrey Tautou as Amélie Poulain, running into her future lover in Amélie (Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain). Steve Buscemi as a clueless American tourist in Paris je t’aime.

Shot far from the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and the glamour of the French capital, these scenes capture the gritty realism of Parisian life, albeit with a touch of movie magic. They were each filmed in a decommissioned subway station that’s been dedicated to film, television, and commercial productions for the past several decades. Yet Porte des Lilas remains something of an industry secret—even in the country where cinema was invented, and despite the fact that several films a year are shot there.

In use until 1929, this part of the station—a decommissioned area hidden behind a door in the otherwise functioning Porte des Lilas Métro stop, on the eastern edge of the city (one of a handful of ghost stations, or partial ghost stations, in the Paris underground)—has been used as a film backdrop since the 1970s. For directors who want to shoot there today, €20,000 buys a “complete shoot” with a train and staff, plus the freedom to transform the station, and the trains stationed there, however they wish. All told, the “studio” accommodates up to 150 people, with two platforms and up to five trains that can move about a kilometer of half a mile through a loop of tunnel that’s disconnected from the rest of the Métro system.

Leave a Comment