Geological origins

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Ancient coarse limestone quarries, exploited between the 13th and 18th centuries to provide the ashlar needed for the capital's buildings, now serve as the setting for the Musée du Vin.

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This limestone characterises a geological stage universally known as the Lutecian (from Lutèce, the ancient name of Paris) located here at 37 m 80 above sea level.

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The Museum's galleries were dug in the lower part of this geological layer, using the turned-pillar technique, i.e. leaving regularly spaced pillars to support the sky.

Masonry walls were built, particularly in the 19th century, to consolidate these galleries.

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The limestone was formed by the accumulation, at the bottom of the warm sea that covered the region 45 million years ago, of shellfish, the fossils of which are still visible in some places (bivalve molluscs or molluscs with elongated shells).

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The well at the entrance to the Museum bears witness to the existence of water tables that sometimes gushed out. Various mineral springs were discovered in this part of Passy between the mid-seventeenth century and 1754 (hence the name given to the Rue des Eaux).

Considered to be ferruginous and laxative, the waters of Passy were exploited until the Second Empire, but it was above all in the 18th century that they were most in vogue, attracting numerous spa-goers from Parisian high society, writers and artists.