What Can Be Found at the Paris Bureau of Found Objects?

On the city's Rue des Mourrian, you'll find a massive storage facility with a fascinating collection everything that's been lost in Paris. The Bureau of Found Objects is a centralized lost and found Things misplaced at airports and museums, on trains and buses, or simply dropped in the street all make their way here to be categorized and stored, waiting for their owners to arrive. The office receives more than

five hundred items every day. The Bureau of Found Objects is administered by the Police Prefecture, a part of the French Ministry of the Interior. It's a relatively modern operation now, but the French have been in the business of reuniting

people with their stuff. For centuries during the Middle Ages and under the feudal system that ruled the Kingdom of France until the Revolution, a lost objects were to be brought to the local lord, who would have the local church publicly announced the find three sundays in a row. After that, if no one stepped forward to claim the object,

the lord would keep it. In eighteen oh four, the lost and found system was centralized and the police took over a found objects were collected in police Commissioner's offices and then brought to the prefect of Paris. As Still, the service wasn't very well known or widely used until eighteen fifty, when it moved into a new building near the Palace of Justice. It took off, and according to the Prefecture, it received nearly ten thousand objects every year.

In nineteen thirty nine, the office moved to its current location, a huge basement space at thirty six Rue des Marian. It's an ornately wood paneled office with heavy wooden furniture in a functional but beautiful early twentieth century brick building the visitors say feels like a step back in time. The guarded back room houses tall stacks of seemingly endless, gray metal shelves filled with items tagged, bagged, or rubber banded together with an inventory slip back. In two thousand

and four, the bureau celebrated its two hundredth birthday. The prefecture stops short of calling it the first Lost and Found office of its kind, though The New York Times called it that in two thousand and five. But certainly they say it is one of the oldest in the world. But the goal of the office isn't simply to house Paris'

misplaced items. Their work is much more proactive. The service allows people to register lost items and actively attempts to identify owners and return their property safe and sound, partially through a now automated service where people can register found items as well. In the best case scenario, an object might be reunited with its owner the very next day

after arriving at the bureau. The office now receives over one hundred and forty thousand items every year, and its employees spend a great deal of time and effort reuniting people in their things. Items with a return address of like wallets containing IDs and driver's licenses are easy enough to mail out a some detective work is done for precious things, like a golden flute that had a conservatory's

stamp inside the case. Other lost items are reclaimed by owners who come looking, speak to someone at a window, fill out a slip describing the thing they've lost, and pay eleven euro in custody fees. Although the physical pickup process was curtailed during the pandemic, but the office is known as a place of joy and wonder. People sometimes are so emotional to be reunited with an object that

they accidentally leave something else there in the process. About one in four items that find their way there are reunited with their owner. The others are kept for either

four months or a year, depending on their perceived value. Sometimes, if an item's been turned in by an individual, no one has come looking for it, and the office has been unable to find its original owner, the classic principle of finders keepers applies, although not if the object is a computer, smartphone, or something else that would contain the owner's personal data like a notebook or by extension, a key.

Unclaimed items like that are eventually destroyed. The bureau sends keys to be melted down for scrap and works with recycling services for electronic waste, to avoid those items going in with regular trash, and if possible, to wipe the data and donate the equipment in Other things after a certain period of time are auctioned off to help fund this and other government programs. New jewelry, cameras and other small valuables are the most often auctioned, but they do

keep a few things to brighten up the stacks. One floored ceiling shelf is bursting with unclaimed stuffed animals, and there's a small collection of unclaimed things the particularly interesting, historically significant, or just plain weird, displayed in a corner of the storage area that functions as a small museum

of sorts, though it's not open to the public. The collection includes multiple human skulls, an old prosthetic leg a five foot replica of a Parisian street lamp, a Napoleonic era saber, legion of honor medals, a helmet from World War One, a tripod and telescope from Victorian England, shards from the World Trade Center, found along with the New York City Transit employees orange safety vest after nine eleven, A wedding dress rumored to have been left in the

cab after a lover's quarrel, a crumbling taxidermid lobster, and a boxed set of two hundred blue monarch butterflies. After setting up a database online and upgrading their shipping capabilities, the office can now accept online claims and mail out found objects. Every day, objects lost in Paris are boxed up and sent off back to their homes around the world. According to the prefecture, the joy of finding your lost object is universal. Today's episode is based on the article

From human Skulls to Handguns. The Paris Lost and Found has Seen it All on Houstuffworks dot com, written by Kate Morgan. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with Housetuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klain. For four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.