page_title: Paris Métro Line 12
section_title: Design features
hierarchical_section_title: Paris Métro Line 12 / Stations / Design features
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Station Sèvres - Babylone de la ligne 12 du métro de Paris, France.
context_page_description: Paris Métro Line 12 is one of the sixteen lines of the Paris Métro. It links Issy-les-Moulineaux, a suburban town southwest of Paris, to Front Populaire, on the border between Saint-Denis and Aubervilliers in the north. With over 84 million journeys per year, Line 12 is the eleventh busiest line of the network. It has several important stops, such as Madeleine, the 6th arrondissement of Paris, Porte de Versailles and two national railway stations, Gare Montparnasse and Gare Saint-Lazare. The service runs every day of the week, starting at 5:30 a.m. and with the last departure at 0:39 a.m. or on Fridays and Saturdays, one hour later. The line uses MF 67 series trains, the network's standard since the early 1970s; they make a complete journey in 36 minutes.
  Line 12 was founded as Line A by the Nord-Sud Company, who also built Line 13. It was built between 1905 and 1910, to connect the districts of Montparnasse, in the south, and Montmartre, in the north. The first trip, from Porte de Versailles to Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, was on 5 November 1910.
context_section_description: Because of the competition with the CMP, the Nord-Sud company paid a special attention to design elements. One of the notable elements is the Saint-Lazare station in which architect Lucien Bechmann designed a rotunda for the tickets and transfer room. The station entrances of the Nord-Sud company, in ceramic and iron, are of a more sober styling than the Art nouveau designs of Hector Guimard for the CMP's entrances. The word "Nord-Sud" appeared in white on red for the maximum visibility at a distance. In the 1970s, the Hector Guimard entrance from Hotel de Ville station was moved to Abbesses station.
  In the stations, the supporting walls are vertical and not vaulted, and the ceramic tiles carry the customary "NS" logo of the company. The tile trims are brown in stations without a transfer, and green in those with. Madeleine station has blue tile trim because of its connection with the CMP. In addition, on the headwalls of the tunnels a signage indicate the direction of the trains accompanied by an arrow indicating the platform on the right. All stations on the line inside Paris had this signage, though some have disappeared in renovations over the years. At each station between Solférino and Notre-Dame des Champs (except Rue du Bac) are inscribed "DIRᴼᴺ MONTPARNASSE" or "DIRᴼᴺ MONTMARTRE". In the north, at Marcadet – Poissonniers, Lamarck – Caulaincourt and Abbesses, the signs on the headwalls are "DIRᴼᴺ PTE de VERSAILLES"/"DIRᴼᴺ PTE de LA CHAPELLE". In the south, at Falguière, the signs are "DIRᴼᴺ PTE de VERSAILLES"/"DIRᴼᴺ MONTMARTRE".
  Two stations, due to their depth underground, have lifts: Abbesses and Lamarck – Caulaincourt. Five stations have unique décor, each based around a single theme: Abbesses, Concorde, Assemblée nationale, Montparnasse – Bienvenüe and Pasteur.
  Abbesses station can be accessed via two shafts, one for the lifts, the other the stairs which are decorated with, on the descent, famous sights in Montmartre such as the Moulin Rouge, Sacré Coeur or place des Abbesses, and depictions of nature and daily life while ascending. This installation was painted in 2007 to replace a mosaic patchwork previously done by artists from the area, which had been vandalised over the years.
  Concorde station was renovated in the early 1990s, it is decorated with small ceramic tiles, each depicting a different letter. Together forming extracts from the Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen de 1789, the design was conceived by Françoise Schein.
  Since 1990, Assemblée nationale station no longer carries election material, but the posters show heads in silhouette, representing the deputies of l'Assemblée nationale. It was designed by Jean-Charles Blais and is regularly refreshed according to the parliamentary calendar.
  Montparnasse – Bienvenüe station is named after its location and the "father" of the Metropolitan system in Paris, Fulgence Bienvenüe. Thus it was a natural choice for an exhibition on the technology and literature of the metro, in celebration of its centenary in 2000. Extracts from works about the Metro adorn the walls of its corridors.
  Pasteur station has an exhibition dedicated to medicine, installed during the centenary of the Metro and the renovation of the station on Line 6. The panels depict the evolution of biology and medicine since Louis Pasteur, in the context of the time, and with various anecdotes.
caption: The headwall indicates the direction towards the terminus in all the stations of the Nord-Sud line, seen here at Sèvres – Babylone station
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "DSC-W7", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0", "Image DateTime": "2008:10:03 02:12:23", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0]", "Image ExifOffset": "296", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "822", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "3611", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/8", "EXIF FNumber": "16/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "320", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:10:01 19:47:25", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:10:01 19:47:25", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "8", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "46/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1365", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1024", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}