Beneath the streets of London, a whole hidden city lies half-forgotten, full of Edwardian-era tunnels and disused railway equipment. A new book called “Hidden London: Discovering the Forgotten Underground” takes us down into the abandoned tributaries of the city’s subterranean transportation network to tell us tales about its past.

Written by a group of directors and collectors at the London Transport Museum, the book features fascinating photographs by Toby Madden and Andy Davies, views most people don’t get to enjoy in person.

“Hidden London is a lavishly illustrated history of disused and repurposed London Underground spaces. It provides the first narrative of a previously secret and barely understood aspect of London’s history. Behind locked doors and lost entrances lies a secret world of abandoned stations, redundant passageways, empty elevator shafts, and cavernous ventilation ducts. The Tube is an ever-expanding network that has left in its wake hidden places and spaces.”

“Hidden London opens up the lost worlds of London’s Underground and offers a fascinating analysis of why Underground spaces—including the deep-level shelter at Clapham South, the closed Aldwych station, the lost tunnels of Euston—have fallen into disuse and how they have been repurposed. With access to previously unseen archives, architectural drawings, and images, the authors create an authoritative account of London’s hidden Underground story. This surprising and at times myth-breaking narrative interweaves spectacular, newly commissioned photography of disused stations and Underground structures today.”

The book made its debut September 10 on Yale University Press, authored by David Bownes, Chris Nix, Siddy Holloway and Sam Mullins. It’s also part of a new “Hidden London” exhibition at the London Transport Museum, which opens October 11 and will feature a large collection of rare archive photos, objects and diagrams from disused stations as well as a recreated abandoned ticket hall and secret life-size underground dining room.

Often mysterious, somber and a little otherworldly, subterranean spaces add a sense of depth (no pun intended) to the art installations and performances held within them. Abandoned subway platforms, tunnels beneath old psychiatric hospitals, cisterns, ice wells, bunkers and even manholes invite us to descend beneath the surface of the earth to experience art on another level.

The Water at The Cisterns by Hiroshi Sambuichi

Damp and dreary yet monumental, with the proportions of a cathedral, this former underground water reservoir in Copenhagen was once an unknown beauty beneath the city, but now functions as ’The Cisterns,’ an unusual art venue. Japanese architect Hiroshi Sambuichi delicately transforms the space while paying respect to all of these qualities with ‘The Water,’ a subterranean landscape installation taking viewers on “a journey through an underground sea of light and darkness.” Natural light, moss and an icy glass cube play with the humidity and moisture levels of the space, making it feel a bit like a secret underground forest.

JFK Figurine Hidden in a Desert Bunker

You’re hiking through the unforgiving plains of the California desert when you come upon a mysterious black hatch. Against your better judgment, you open it and climb down the ladder into a huge metal pipe that appears to be part of some kind of bunker. Inside, what you find is more bizarre than pretty much anything you could have imagined: a statue of John F. Kennedy perched on a stool, casually crossing his legs. Artist Will Boone based his sculpture on a figure from a hobby kit, scaling it up to life-size. To him, the installation “speaks not just to all those things that have been driven underground since the extinguished optimism of the sixties but to those same fears – nuclear attack and the invasion of the other – that have been so vividly resurrected in recent times.”

Secret Sculptural Installations Beneath Paris

An artist who wishes to remain anonymous descended into the many subterranean spaces beneath Paris to illegally install secret art installations, each one often requiring many hours of investigative preparation both to access the space, avoid getting caught and keep the art undisturbed for as long as possible, though he’s gone to jail once or twice. The installations themselves often feel like reverent tributes to the people who occupy liminal spaces in society, evoking camps where homeless people and refugees often live.

Repurposed Oil Tanks at the Tate Modern in London

Repurposed by the firm Herzog & de Meuron, the enormous underground oil tanks of a former power station now act as a dramatic backdrop for performances, interactive art and video installations at London’s Tate Modern. “No longer generating electricity, the Tanks generate ideas, creative energy and new possibilities for artists and audiences,” says the museum. “These raw, industrial, subterranean spaces, each measuring over thirty meters across and seven meters high are the world’s first museum galleries permanently dedicated to exhibiting live art, performance, installation and film.” [Middle photo by Ray Tung/Rex Features.]

D.C.’s Dupont Underground Arts Space

The 75,000-square-foot east platform of Washington D.C.’s subterranean trolley station Dupont Underground is now a visual art and performance space hosting revolving exhibitions as well as performances, permanent murals and other programming. Lying beneath the city’s Dupont Circle about a mile from the White House, this underground space was closed off in 1962 when the city’s streetcar system shut down, and remained empty until the new arts space opened in 2015. Among the installations it has hosted is ‘Whimsical Invasion’ by Hyuntek Yoon and Youngeun Kwun, consisting of over 650,000 plastic balls in nylon netting.

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There’s a good chance that no one, other than an errant worker, will ever even see these highly symbolic (not to mention illegal) installations hidden far beneath the streets of Paris. Tucked into tunnels that have been disused for decades, an artist we’ll call EZ (who asked us to remain anonymous), has has created sculptural wonders with a furtive feel, each one requiring hours upon hours of investigative preparation as the artist slinks around the subterranean spaces to find locations that will be undisturbed as long as possible.

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“I place cigarette butts inside door locks, wedge things underneath the door, and place objects along hallways and passageways,” EZ says. “Then I come back later to see if they’re moved, and when. I also research the locations extensively, and try to see if any construction work is planned along the subway lines. I try and find out workers’ hours and those of security as well. I also plan an emergency exit, in case something goes wrong.”

The Paris-based urban explorer maps out these ideal spots and enters them at dawn, spending around ten hours at a time building his installations in place. Most are made using materials he finds within the tunnels, like branches, pallets, pipe, string and the remains of old structures. Most of his locations aren’t disclosed, but EZ says 2014’s Radeau échoué (Sunken Raft, below) was placed along a subway line, while Désenchantement (Disenchantment, above) occupied an underground room beneath the contemporary art space La Maison Rouge.

There’s definitely risk involved – the artist one spent three days in jail after he was caught in a restricted area, and has been escorted back above ground on other occasions. But EZ finds the whole process to be healing and restorative, telling the Creators Project, “I explore underground when I feel blue. It soothes me.”

The secretive nature of the process is a fitting complement to the work itself, which often evokes images of camps for refugees and the homeless. Accessed and utilized without permission, these often wasted spaces are temporary homes to surreal architectural creations, if not to the humans who could actually use them.

A fragile layer of glass is all that prevents you from falling, Alice-in-Wonderland-style, into a tunnel of books that seems to descend deep below the surface of the earth, its bottom shrouded in darkness. Roughly the size of a mine shaft, this miniature subterranean library hides all of its titles from view, the spines of the books turned inward, making it all the more mysterious.

Entitled ‘When My Father Died It Was Like a Whole Library Had Burned Down,’ the intriguing installation by Swedish artist Susanna Hesselberg has been dug into the sand on a Denmark beach for the biennial Sculpture by the Sea art festival. The name references a line in the song World Without End by pioneering experimental electronic musician Laurie Anderson. Hesselberg previously installed the piece as a tower of books rising into the air, rather than plummeting under the surface of the earth.

We previously covered another entry into the show, ‘New Horizon,’ a wooden observation point that perfectly frames views of the sky and sea. Check out the rest of the 56 site-specific exhibits, including large-scale architectural sculptures on land and on the water, currently lining the coast of Aarhus, Denmark. Sculpture by the Sea is the nation’s largest outdoor sculpture exhibition, occurring every two years and featuring artists from two dozen countries.

Subterranean spaces now silent, dank and cobwebbed once bustled with activity – often of the illicit variety – housing secret speakeasies, opium dens, bootlegging operations and hubs for human trafficking. Others were literally entire cities unto themselves, complete with roller skating rinks. Some are still a mystery, decades after their discovery. These 10 once-thriving underground complexes were abandoned for many years and nearly forgotten as the cities above them evolved.

Ancient Underground Tunnels of Germany

Nobody has any clue why a network of claustrophobic stone tunnels emerge into the kitchens of farmhouses, the aisles of churches and the center of cemeteries in a small town near Munich. The German state of Bavaria is packed with at least 700 such tunnel systems but perhaps none are so mysterious as the Erdstall, which was discovered when a grazing dairy cow suddenly fell into the earth, revealing an opening. The tunnels are uncomfortably cramped, leading to local legends that they were constructed by elves. Archaeologists have ruled out their use as storage space or livestock housing and have found very few artifacts inside, deepening the mystery. It’s believed that only about 10% of the total tunnel system has been explored.

Burlington Bunker, England

A secret rail line leads from London’s royal palaces directly to a nuclear blast-proof bunker with sixty miles of roadways and its own underground lake, about 100 feet below the small town of Corsham. Built in the ’50s to house 4,000 central Government employees during a nuclear strike, the Burlington Bunker is truly a city unto itself with kitchens, laundry facilities, its own pub and a communications hub from which the Prime Minister would have addressed the nation in the event of an attack. Capable of withstanding bombs, radiation and poison gas, it was designed to keep its inhabitants safe and healthy for a three-month stretch. But nobody outside those with the right level of clearance even knew this facility existed until 2004, when it was decommissioned. The walls are covered in murals, the kitchen equipment still seemingly ready to churn out food for hundreds at any moment, the beds dressed in white sheets and red pillows. Read more and see hundreds of photos at BBC.

Shanghai Tunnels: Portland, Oregon

Unconscious men and women who had been drugged with opiates, knocked out or otherwise incapacitated were once carried through the dank tunnels leading from Portland, Oregon’s hotel and business basements out to the Willamette River at a rate of up to ten per day. The ‘Shanghai Tunnels‘ were initially built to keep ship equipment out of the rain and transport supplies to the city, but between 1850 and 1941, they were the shadowy setting for a booming slave trade. Portland became known as the “Forbidden City of the West” thanks to the ‘Shanghaiing’ trade, in which men were captured and sold to ship captains as slaves. But of course, women weren’t safe from the dangers, either: they were often kidnapped, sold and sent off to faraway cities to be held as sex slaves.

Most of these subterranean spaces have since been filled in as Portland has grown over the decades, and as far as anyone knows, there aren’t any that still lead to the waterfront. But the Cascade Geographic Society conducts tours of the parts that are still accessible, and is currently digging out new tunnels.

The Speakeasy Tunnels of Moose Jaw, Canada

On the surface, the town of Moose Jaw doesn’t seem much different from many other historic small towns in Saskatchewan, Canada. But just beneath the pavement is a labyrinth of tunnels constructed during the late 19th century that ultimately became known as ‘Al Capone’s Hangout.’ They were originally built so building staff could move from one building to the next to keep the furnaces going in the frigid winters, but Chinese migrants escaping persecution during the Yellow Peril eventually moved into them and started their own little subterranean society. Sleeping three to a bed, they worked long hard hours for little money and soothed themselves with opium. Then, once prohibition hit, the town became a hub for rum-running, gambling and prostitution. The Al Capone reference comes from a legend that the mobster had interests in the bootlegging operations, but no written or photographic proof exists that he ever visited.

Today, the tunnels are open for tours year-round, though the living inhabitants have long since been replaced with animatronics, and the barrels of contraband booze with empty containers.

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