Addendum to page 154 of the Cities Guide

Addendum to the page 154 of the Cities Guide

Some recent biographic search concerning Jules Verne, made it possible to discover new handwritten notes which could inform us on the existence of a new passage and which would contradict the assertion of the novelist according to which "it is by the only force of imagination" that it would have managed to leave his terrestrial universe

Young teenager and already grass writer, Jules Verne liked to walk on a large building site started in 1843: a passage connecting the hillock of the theatre and the Pit skirting the port of its good birthplace

Thus, the young traveller tells it with Anybody, his companion of childhood, how it faced the interdicts and the dangers of such building sites.

He writes: "the workmen of the Voruz foundry installed a gigantic scaffolding in order to mount the metal frame intended to support the canopy of the passage. I ventured in the interlacings of this incredible vertical labyrinth. Afterwards many did distorsions, I slip into a narrow opening which gave access to me... how describing what I discovered? All the dreams which I made for some time seemed to have taken body. In front of my eyes extended a splendid traversed city from..." Follows one seizing description of what could be the town of Brüsel such as we know it. The description of the place of arrival of the young person Jules Verne is not without pointing out the architecture of the future Pommeraye passage still visible in Nantes.

Nantes, The "Pommeraye Passage", a lost passage place