Butte-aux-Cailles swimming pool, Art Nouveau swimming pool in Quartier de la Maison-Blanche, Paris, France
Butte-aux-Cailles swimming pool stands at 5 place Paul-Verlaine, its red-brick Art Nouveau facade unusual for a Paris pool, with a tall square brick tower and a round-arched entrance under an inscribed stone panel. Inside, a concrete vault rests on seven light arches. It holds a 33 m indoor pool and two outdoor pools of 25 m and 12 m, plus a solarium.
A hot underground aquifer was found on the site in 1866, leading to public baths and showers built in 1908. Louis Bonnier designed the swimming pool added to them, built from 1922 to 1924 and fed by an artesian well dug in 1893. It has been a listed monument historique since 1990.
The pool appears in Arnaud Desplechin's 1996 film Comment je me suis disputé… (ma vie sexuelle), and in 2006 Mariette Teisserenc showed monumental works here during the Nuit Blanche. Its name comes from the Butte-aux-Cailles hill where it stands, at 5 place Paul-Verlaine.
The pool stands at 5, place Paul-Verlaine, near the Place d'Italie metro station served by lines 5, 6 and 7. Bathers must pass through showers and a footbath before entering, a hygiene rule built into the 1922–1924 design. The complex has a 33 m indoor pool and two outdoor pools of 25 m and 12 m, plus a solarium.
The hot underground aquifer was found in 1866, not 1946, and led to the 1908 baths; the pool's water came from an artesian well designed by François Arago and dug in 1893. Since 2016, heat from servers installed in the basement has warmed part of the water, cutting the data centre's air conditioning.
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