Porte des Lilas station

I want to tell you about a train station. This is not a story about its architecture, or its history of connecting people. This is a story about a song. And a movie set. And the quiet hum of Paris. This is the Porte des Lilas station in Paris. It serves two lines, the 3bis and the 11. It's named after an old gate, a relic from a time when Paris had walls. But the station itself, opened in 1921, has a history of plans that didn't quite pan out. It was meant to be a junction, a busier hub, but some of those connections never materialized. There are platforms there, built for lines that never ran, or only ran for a short time. And for a long time, that might have been the end of the story. Just another station on the edge of Paris. But then, in 1958, a song came out. It was called "Le poinçonneur des Lilas," which translates to "The Ticket Puncher of Lilas." And the singer was Serge Gainsbourg. It's a melancholic song. It paints a picture of the daily grind, the soul-crushing ennui of a ticket agent, punching ticket after ticket, day in and day out. The lyrics are famous in France. And the music video for that song? They filmed it right there, in the Porte des Lilas station. You can see Gainsbourg, in a Métro uniform, punching tickets. It’s a strange kind of fame for a station. Not for its grandeur, but for its representation of a mundane, almost tragic, existence. The song gave the station a cultural weight, a kind of artistic immortality. But the story doesn't end with the song. Remember those disused platforms? The ones built for the lines that never quite materialized? Well, they found a new purpose. They became a film set. The RATP, the Paris transit authority, realized they had this unused space, and they could rent it out. They call it Porte des Lilas – Cinéma. It's a functional part of the transit network, but it can be closed off to become a movie set. And it's been used a lot. Big productions. Films like "Julie & Julia" used it. More recently, "John Wick: Chapter 4" filmed scenes there. They even adapt the station signs for whatever movie they're shooting. It's generated significant revenue for the RATP, averaging over 200,000 euros a year. About five films are shot there annually. So, you have this place that was initially designed for transit, but which became famous through a song about boredom, and is now a working film set. It’s a testament to how spaces can have multiple lives, multiple meanings. This is based on the Wikipedia article titled "Porte des Lilas station," available under Creative Commons. The hosts are synthetic voices.