Réservoir de Montsouris

The Réservoir de Montsouris reveals itself from the street as a long, high wall built of millstone along Avenue Reille, topped by two glass and metal pavilions. These structures, often called lanterns, sit at the edge of a massive, grass-covered mound that hides one of the most significant pieces of nineteenth-century engineering in Paris. Designed by the engineer Eugène Belgrand and built between eighteen sixty-nine and eighteen seventy-four, this site was created to secure a clean drinking water supply for a rapidly growing capital.