A Victimless Crime of the Very Best Kind

(Above: The Paris Pantheon, inside and out.)

I had absolutely nothing to do with the story that follows, though I really wish I did.

One of the most beloved landmarks in Paris, the Pantheon is a former church that's sat in the heart of the Latin Quarter for more than two hundred years. But the French government hasn't alway done such a wonderful job of keeping monuments like the Pantheon in good repair. Sometime in the 1960s the building's famous clock stopped ticking, and since then, it's been allowed to slowly rust away.

About a year ago, an group of "cultural guerillas" finally decided to take matters into their own hands. Known as the Untergunther (or les UX), the organization's members have been described as "connaisseurs of the Parisian underworld." Previously, they'd dedicated themselves to restoring Paris's underground crypts and holding forbidden gatherings in the catacombs deep beneath the city. (Among their 150 recruits are the mysterious individuals known as the Perforating Mexicans.) But over time, the Untergunther began to focus their activities on restoring France's neglected historic buildings.

Under the leadership of a master clockmaker with first-class lock-picking skills, members of the Untergunther broke into the Pantheon one night in 2006 and "set up a secret workshop and lounge in a cavity under the building's famous dome." For over a year, they managed to avoid security guards and building employees as they repaired the ancient clock day and night.

When the work was finally finished, they revealed their good deed to the authorities. And what did the authorities do? They pressed charges. The clockmaker and his cronies faced a year in jail and $20,000 fines. Fortunately, the judge took only twenty minutes to rule in favor of the Untergunther.

The group is currently working on another secret project somewhere in Paris. Good for them. Stupid laws are meant to be broken.

Read the original article in the Guardian here. Those who read French can visit the Untergunther's website here.

Many, many thanks to TheMog for bringing this story to my attention.