Maison Blanche () is a station of the
Paris Métro
The Paris Métro (french: Métro de Paris ; short for Métropolitain ) is a rapid transit system in the Paris metropolitan area, France. A symbol of the city, it is known for its density within the capital's territorial limits, uniform architec ...
, serving
Line 7. South of this station, the line forks into two branches, one leading to
Villejuif – Louis Aragon and the other to
Mairie d'Ivry. Also, an extension of
Paris Metro Line 14
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
to
Orly Airport
Paris Orly Airport (french: Aéroport de Paris-Orly), commonly referred to as Orly , is one of two international airports serving the French capital, Paris, the other one being Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG). It is located partially in Orly ...
in 2024 will pass through this station as part of the
Grand Paris Express
Grand Paris Express is a group of new rapid transit lines being built in the Île-de-France region of France. The project comprises four new lines for Paris Métro, plus extensions of existing Lines 11 and 14. A total of of new track and 68 n ...
.
Location
The station is located under
Avenue d'Italie, between Rue Caillaux and Rue Bourgon, near
Porte d'Italie
Porte d'Italie is one of the city gates of Paris, located in the 13th arrondissement, at the intersection of Avenue d'Italie, Boulevard Massena, Avenue de la Porte d'Italie and street Kellermann, facing the Kremlin-Bicetre.
The "gate of Italy" i ...
, a gate in the former
Thiers Wall
The Thiers wall (''Enceinte de Thiers'') was the last of the defensive walls of Paris. It was an enclosure constructed between 1841 and 1846 and was proposed by the French prime minister Adolphe Thiers but was actually implemented by his succe ...
. Towards the south, this is the last station in the common trunk line before the branches separate, thanks to an underground
grade-separated junction A grade-separated junction is a transport junction where at least one bridge or tunnel is used to separate traffic flows (known as grade separation).
Relevant articles include:
* Road interchanges
Interchange may refer to:
Transport
* Interch ...
located after the station, one towards ''Mairie d'Ivry'' and the other towards ''Villejuif-Louis Aragon''. Oriented approximately along a north-south axis, it is positioned between ''Tolbiac'' on the one hand and ''Porte d'Italie'' (towards Ivry) or ''Le Kremlin-Bicêtre'' (towards Villejuif) on the other.
History
It opened as part of a planned section of
Line 7, which was temporarily operated as part of
Line 10 until the completion of the under-
Seine crossing of line 7 from
Pont de Sully
The Pont de Sully (or Pont Sully; ) is a bridge across the Seine in Paris, France.
In reality two separate bridges, carrying the Boulevard Henri IV, which meet on the eastern tip of the Île Saint-Louis in the 4th arrondissement of Paris. The nor ...
to
Place Monge. On 7 March 1930 the line was extended from
Place d'Italie to
Porte de Choisy
The Quartier asiatique (Asian Quarter), also called Triangle de Choisy or Petite Asie (Chinese: 巴黎唐人街, Vietnamese: ''Phố Tàu Paris'') is the largest commercial and cultural center for the Asian community of Paris. It is located in t ...
, including ''Maison Blanche''. The station was integrated into line 7 on 26 April 1931. The station is named after the district, which gets its name from a hotel of the same name, which is French for "White House".
Along with
Place des Fêtes, a prototype air raid shelter was added to the station in 1935 to protect it from chemical attacks and was fitted with airtight doors to allow the people to take refuge inside in the event of an attack. They were chosen due to their proximity to the heavily populated, working-class districts.
Early plans to extend
line 14 from
Olympiades to the
Orly Airport
Paris Orly Airport (french: Aéroport de Paris-Orly), commonly referred to as Orly , is one of two international airports serving the French capital, Paris, the other one being Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG). It is located partially in Orly ...
included the possibility of taking over the existing line 7 branch from this station to Villejuif – Louis Aragon, which opened in the early-1980s. However, the inclusion of line 14 in the
Grand Paris Express
Grand Paris Express is a group of new rapid transit lines being built in the Île-de-France region of France. The project comprises four new lines for Paris Métro, plus extensions of existing Lines 11 and 14. A total of of new track and 68 n ...
project means that the line 14 extension to Orly will only consist of new infrastructure.
An attack was perpetrated by a terrorist group (
GIA
''Gia'' is a 1998 American biographical drama television film about the life and times of one of the first supermodels, Gia Carangi. The film stars Angelina Jolie as Gia and Faye Dunaway as Wilhelmina Cooper, with Mercedes Ruehl and Elizabeth M ...
) near the station on 6 October 1995. A gas cylinder placed in a trash can was discovered by a postman, but it exploded while the police set up a security perimeter; the toll is 18 injured. The place was chosen to reference the circumstances of the arrest of
Khaled Kelkal, one of the main instigators of the RER B attack in Saint-Michel. A few days earlier, on 29 September 1995, the police had shot Kelkal during his arrest at a place called Maison Blanche, near
Vaugneray (
Rhône
The Rhône ( , ; wae, Rotten ; frp, Rôno ; oc, Ròse ) is a major river in France and Switzerland, rising in the Alps and flowing west and south through Lake Geneva and southeastern France before discharging into the Mediterranean Sea. At Ar ...
).
As part of RATP's ''Renouveau du métro'' renewal program, the station corridors and platform lighting were renovated on 4 October 2006.
In 2019, 1,803,381 travellers entered this station, which places it at the 259th position among metro stations for its number of visitors out of 302.
Passenger services
Access
The station has three entrances in front of no's 103, 144 and 162 in the Avenue d'Italie.
A fourth entrance , located at no. 119, was closed in November 2019 to allow the construction of the line 14 station. In return, the entrance located at no. 162 was rebuilt from 2016 to 2019 and provided with a escalator to exit the station.
Station layout
Platforms
Maison Blanche is a standard configuration station. It has two platforms separated by the metro tracks and the vault is elliptical. The decoration is of the style used for the majority of metro stations. The lighting canopies are white and rounded in the ''Gaudin'' style of the ''renouveau du métro des années 2000'' renewal, and the bevelled white ceramic tiles cover the upright wall, the vault and the tunnel exits. The advertising frames are in honey-coloured
faience
Faience or faïence (; ) is the general English language term for fine tin-glazed pottery. The invention of a white pottery glaze suitable for painted decoration, by the addition of an oxide of tin to the slip of a lead glaze, was a major a ...
and the name of the station is also in earthenware. The seats are ''Motte'' style in a blue colour.
Bus connections
The station is served by line 47 and by the urban service ''La Traverse Bièvre Montsouris'' of the
RATP Bus Network
The RATP bus network covers the entire territory of the city of Paris and the vast majority of its near suburbs.
Operated by the Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP), this constitutes a dense bus network complementary to other public ...
.
Line 14 extension project
As part of the extension to the south of
Line 14 towards
Orly Airport
Paris Orly Airport (french: Aéroport de Paris-Orly), commonly referred to as Orly , is one of two international airports serving the French capital, Paris, the other one being Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG). It is located partially in Orly ...
, under the contracting authority of the Société du Grand Paris, the station should become around 2024, a connection station between the two lines, under the name ''Maison Blanche - Paris XIIIe''.
It would host a
Véligo station. It will be one of the three stations of Line 14 built in Paris as part of the
Grand Paris Express
Grand Paris Express is a group of new rapid transit lines being built in the Île-de-France region of France. The project comprises four new lines for Paris Métro, plus extensions of existing Lines 11 and 14. A total of of new track and 68 n ...
, while the other two,
Pont Cardinet and
Porte de Clichy, are under the contracting authority of
Île-de-France Mobilités
Île-de-France Mobilités (ÎDF Mobilités), formerly ''STIF'', is the brand name of the ''Syndicat des transports d'Île-de-France'', the organisation authority that controls and coordinates the different transport companies operating in the ...
, located in the
17th arrondissement
The 17th arrondissement of Paris (''XVIIe arrondissement'') is one of the 20 arrondissements of the capital city of France. In spoken French, it is referred to as ''le dix-septième'' (; "the seventeenth").
The arrondissement, known as Batignoll ...
, in the north of the capital.
The station will be located between Rue Caillaux and Rue Tagore, along Avenue d'Italie, east of the current metro station of Line 7. Access to the Line 14 and Line 7 platforms will be from the centre of a large forecourt where the entrance to the metro is located. Travelers can use escalators or elevators to access the platforms. From the platforms, located about 21 metres (69 feet) deep, the connection to the Line 7 metro will be via the mezzanine. The surface forecourt will provide access to the
T3a tram line or the Porte d'Italie bus hub.
The design of the station is entrusted to the consortium led by the engineers
SETEC TPI and
SYSTRA
SYSTRA is a multinational engineering and consulting group in the mobility sector, whose fields of activity include rail and public transport. In 2019, it employed a staff of about 7,300 people, and is a limited company which shareholders includ ...
as well as to Mark Wilson of the Groupe-6 architecture firm.
Californian artist and environmentalist sculptor Ned Kahn will create an art installation overlooking the station in coordination with Mark Wilson. The work called ''River of Air'' is made of stainless steel and flexible sheets of
ETFE
Ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE) is a fluorine-based plastic. It was designed to have high corrosion resistance and strength over a wide temperature range. ETFE is a polymer and its source-based name is poly(ethene-co-tetrafluoroethene). It is ...
(ethylene tetrafluoroethylene) which will wave and reflect the sunlight above the two of the station emergences. The height of the masts supporting the structure will be and the sail will be long and wide.
The preparatory work took place from November 2016 until the end of 2017. The construction of the station began in 2018 for commissioning in 2024.
[ It was awarded in March 2018 to ]Léon Grosse
Léon Grosse is a French civil engineering and construction firm. It is one of the leading actors on the French market, with a turnover of 720 M€ in 2014 and 2,300 employees.
The company was founded by Léon Grosse in 1881 in Aix-Les-Bains
Aix ...
in a consortium with Soletanche Bachy France.
Culture
The station serves as the backdrop for an important scene from Günter Grass's novel ''The Tin Drum
''The Tin Drum'' (german: Die Blechtrommel, ) is a 1959 novel by Günter Grass. The novel is the first book of Grass's ' ('' Danzig Trilogy''). It was adapted into a 1979 film, which won both the 1979 Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Bes ...
'' (1960), in which the hero, Oscar Matzerath, sees the inspectors coming to arrest him as he walks towards the exit using the escalator.
Nearby
* Asian Quarter
* Quartier de la Maison-Blanche
References
Paris Métro stations in the 13th arrondissement of Paris
Railway stations in France opened in 1930
Paris Métro stations located underground
{{Paris-metro-stub