Gare du Nord

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Front of the Gare du Nord

Gare du Nord as seen from the Thalys platform

Detail of the main entrance of the Gare du Nord

Panoramic view of the arrival hall

Departure board showing typical destinations

Eurostar, Thalys and TGV trains fill the platforms on a busy Sunday afternoon during the 2007 Rugby World Cup.

The new part with the hall for the RER lines

The Gare du Nord ("North Station") is one of the six large terminus stations of the SNCF's main line network in Paris. It offers connections with several urban transportation lines (Paris Métro and RER). By number of travellers (around 180 million per year, including Gare du Nord (Paris Métro) and La Chapelle (Paris Métro) and gare du nord RER and Magenta (Paris RER)), it is the busiest station in Europe, and the third -busiest railway station in the world ^[1](after Shinjuku and Ikebukuro stations in Tokyo, Japan and before Waterloo Station in London, England).

The railway station serves trains to the north of France, as well as to various international destinations such as the United Kingdom, Belgium and the Netherlands. It was designed by French architect Jacques Hittorff and built between 1861 and 1864.

[edit] History

The first Gare du Nord was built by Bridge and Roadway engineers on the behalf of the Chemin de Fer du Nord company, which was notably managed by Léonce Reynaud, professor of architecture at the École Polytechnique. The station was inaugurated on 14 June 1846, the same year of the inauguration of the Paris—Amiens—Lille line. Since it turned out to be too small, it was partially demolished in 1860 to provide space for the current station, the former station's façade was removed and placed in Lille.

The president of Chemin de Fer du Nord, James Mayer de Rothschild, chose French architect Jacques Ignace Hittorff. Construction lasted from May 1861 to December 1865, but the new station opened for service while still under construction in 1864. The façade was designed around a triumphal arch and used many slabs of stone. The building has the usual U-shape of a terminus station. The main support beam is made out of cast iron. The support pillars inside of the station were made in the United Kingdom, the only country to contain a sufficiently large foundry to do so.

The sculptural program represents the cities served by the company. The eight most majestic statues, which crown the building along the cornice line, illustrate international destinations, with the ninth figure of Paris in the center. Twelve more modest statues of northern French cities are arrayed lower on the facade. The sculptors represented are:

London and Vienna by Jean-Louis-Nicolas Jaley
Brussels and Warsaw by François Jouffroy
Amsterdam by Charles Gumery
Frankfurt by Gabriel Thomas
Berlin by Jean-Joseph Perraud
Cologne by Mathurin Moreau
Paris by Pierre-Jules Cavelier
Arras and Laon by Théodore-Charles Gruyère
Lille and Beauvais by Charles-François Lebœuf
Valenciennes and Calais by Philippe Joseph Henri Lemaire
Rouen and Amiens by Eugene-Louis Lequesne
Douai and Dunkirk by Gustave Crauck
Cambrai and Saint-Quentin by Auguste Ottin

[edit] Service

Like other Parisian railway stations, the Gare du Nord rapidly became too small to deal with the increase in railway traffic. In 1884, engineers were able to add five supplementary tracks. The interior was completely rebuilt in 1889 and an extension was built on the eastern side to serve suburban train lines. There were further expansions between the 1930s and the 1960s.

Beginning in 1906 and 1908, the station was served by the Paris Métro: Line 4, which crosses Paris from north to south, and the terminus of Line 5, which extended to Gare de Lyon. In the 1930s, Line 5 was extended towards the suburbs of Pantin and Bobigny. Line 2 (station La Chapelle) is linked to the Gare du Nord via an underground tunnel. One enters the Métro station and, instead of climbing the stairs that lead to the elevated métro line (not all of Line 2 is elevated) descends several flights of stairs, before traversing a long, arched circular hallway to enter the gare.

Finally, in 1994, the arrival of Eurostar trains imposed a further reorganisation of the tracks:

Platforms 1 and 2: Service platforms, not open to the public.
Platforms 3 to 6: Terminus of the London Eurostar via the Channel Tunnel.
Platforms 7 and 8: Thalys platforms for Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany.
Platforms 9 to 29: TGV North, Main Line trains, then the Picard TER
Platforms 30 to 40: Suburban station
In the basement, platforms 41 to 44: RER station

There is a further construction project to build a connecting hallway between Gare du Nord and Gare de l'Est, which is projected to open around the time when the new LGV Est begins serving the station.

With around 180 million travellers per year,^[2] Gare du Nord is the busiest station in Europe and the fourth-busiest in the world in terms of passengers. It is not covered by a police service and recently many crimes happened inside the station. Sometimes gates are opened permitting to people of any kind to pass and take any train with or without a regular ticket ^[3].

[edit] In popular culture

The Gare du Nord has served as a backdrop in numerous French films, for instance in Les Poupées Russes.

In US movies, both the exterior and the interior of the Gare du Nord are seen in 2002 the film The Bourne Identity with Matt Damon and again in the trilogy's finale, The Bourne Ultimatum, released in August 2007. It was also seen in Ocean's Twelve in 2004, and Mr Bean's Holiday in 2007.

It is also mentioned in "Polaris" by Jimmy Eat World off their album Futures. In addition, the station was featured in the video for the song "Home" by Blake Shelton.

The station is also mentioned in The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.

[edit] Terminal list

[edit] SNCF

Services operated by SNCF, Eurostar and Thalys

Previous station	Operator	Next Station
Terminus	Thalys Paris-Brussels/Amsterdam	Bruxelles Midi/ Brussel Zuid
Terminus	Eurostar London-Paris	Lille-Europe
Terminus	TGV LGV Nord	Arras
Terminus	Rail Europe Paris-Bourg St Maurice	Chambery
Terminus	SNCF Paris-Amiens	Vernon
Terminus	Transilien Paris - Nord	Saint-Denis
Terminus	Transilien Paris - Nord	Aulnay-sous-Bois
Terminus	TER Picardie Paris-Creil-Amiens	Orry-la-Ville-Coye
Terminus	TER Picardie Paris-Amiens-Lille	Longueau

[edit] RER

(See [1])
Connects to the B and D lines in the basement. Line B serves Charles de Gaulle airport. Line D assures a quick passage between Gare du Nord and Gare de Lyon. Both lines serve Stade de France in Saint-Denis.

The RER station is directly connected to Magenta station which was constructed further underground to the east of Gare du Nord in order to service RER E which connects Gare du Nord to Saint-Lazare/Gare Saint-Lazare.

Previous		Line		Next
La Plaine-Stade de France		RER B		Châtelet-Les-Halles
Stade de France-Saint Denis		RER D		Châtelet-Les-Halles

[edit] Métro

Lines 4 and 5, whose following station is Gare de l'Est.
There has been a connecting hallway connecting the RER station with La Chapelle on Line 2 since the 1990s.