The library of ground

Every place Strata has dug, assembled from its sources and filed by locality and era. A place is reviewed again whenever the ground beneath it is dug afresh.

528 places · 215 localities · last reviewed 27 October 2026

France ParisParis grew from a besieged island fortress in the Seine into a capital rebuilt by kings, revolutionaries and Haussmann's planners alike. Its streets hold a demolished medieval castle, toll gates turned into grand squares, wartime executions and liberations, and theatres, cafés and cabarets layered over Roman and Eocene ground. 39 digs
404 records

Paris's largest cemetery Boulevard de Ménilmontant · 1164–now A courthouse built on a royal palace Quai de l'Horloge · 2843 BC–2018 A small park over the Barrière d'Enfer Avenue du Colonel Henri Rol Tanguy · 1765–1991 A bronze victory column, toppled once Les Feuillants Convent · 941–1912 A bronze victory column in central Paris Le Génie de la Liberté · 1254–1995 Paris's oldest restaurant on the Place du Tertre Saint-Pierre de Montmartre · 1100–2011 A royal square on the Île de la Cité place Dauphine · 51 BC–1950 Paris's largest public square Obélisque de Louxor · 1289 BC–2024 The garden at the center of Place des Vosges Place des Vosges · 100 BC–1848 The tower built to be torn down after 20 years Pavillon Ferrié · 1651–1948 A customs wall became a star of streets Place de Clichy · 1785–2001 A judicial island has held prisoners, kings and corpses alike Siege of Paris · 500–1972 Bullet scars still mark the École Militaire's windows Les Invalides · 1751–2025 Innkeepers near this corner were fined for smuggled wine Rue Friant · 1721–1972 An officer was shot forty-one metres from Point Zéro Siege of Paris · 700–2019 Vikings besieged this island twice Siege of Paris · 250 BC–1995 A reliquary and a courthouse share one walled island Siege of Paris · 250 BC–2014 Vikings besieged the island fortress that became Paris Siege of Paris · 250 BC–1995 Egyptian dead lie beneath the Louvre's old fortress yard Louvre Castle · 100 BC–1794 A castle's foundations lie beneath the glass pyramid Pyramide du Louvre · 500–1989 A teenager died at this Paris street junction in 2013 Citadium · 1783–1999 Eight hundred fell where a Paris street narrows · 1358–1938 A pilot died refusing to abandon his wounded mechanic Rue Gustave Courbet · 1730–1980 Ravel composed Daphnis et Chloé near this kiosk Le Kiosque de Paris · 1836–1944 A fireman died here as Paris was freed Hôtel Landolfo-Carcano · 1785–2021 A bronze general strides past a headless saint Charles de Gaulle · 1667–2024 An orientalist theatre vanished after fifteen years here Keolis · 1779–1951 Cinema was born in the basement of a café boulevard Café de la Paix · 1600–2025 Poincaré unveiled a monument to Sardou here Hôtel Marcel Dassault · 1768–2002 An anarchist's dismissal fed a bombing campaign Place Vendôme · 1587–2014 Convents gave way to the state's chief auditor Les Feuillants Convent · 1200–2014 A hotel stands where an arsenal once armed the crown SO/ Paris Hôtel · 1254–2022 Chaillot hill has been cleared and rebuilt for two centuries Carlingue · 1794–1980 A hotel of spectacle stands where cinema was born nearby InterContinental Paris le Grand · 1600–2025 A straight royal line gathers singers, surrealists and circuses Axe historique · 1682–2015

France RodezRodez grew around ground once held by the counts of Armagnac, on which a wealthy merchant raised a Renaissance townhouse near Place de l'Olmet in the early sixteenth century. Marriage and sale carried the house through later families, while restoration and listing in the nineteenth century preserved its facade. 1 dig
16 records France BezannesBezannes, near Reims, is a place where champagne trade and the wider world have repeatedly met. It gave its name to the Charles Heidsieck house, founded here in 1851, and later to a TGV station opened in 2007 that put the commune on the national rail map. 1 dig
26 records France Le Mesnil-AmelotLe Mesnil-Amelot lies on Eocene and Oligocene rock of the Paris Basin, a place once marked by a royal coach road toward Reims and Flanders, and now by the edge of an airport, where a jet-age hotel and a high-speed rail station beneath Terminal 2 have reshaped the ground. 1 dig
3 records France VersaillesVersailles grew around the palace where the French court lived from 1682 until the Revolution of 1789. Within and beside its walls, kings were ritualised, an empire was proclaimed, a monarchy's end was sworn, and in 1978 a nationalist bomb gutted a wing of the building that had outlasted it all. 1 dig
15 records

A record of ground, not a magazine.

Nothing here was commissioned. Each place is assembled from its own sources, published at the resolution of the ground rather than the point, and reviewed again when the record changes. No page reports a person.