Well... It is not so much a stretch of the imagination...
The real world is always the more stranger...
Rome is full... FULL of underground passageways, rooms and vaults. The reason being that people built on the detritus and ruins left by the people before. Rome now is a good 100 meters higher (need to check this number) than Ancient Rome. They also built viaducts, sewers and rudimentary heating systems underground.
Paris also has a vast network of tunnels and catacombs. Possibly even more than Rome, as they were purposefully built...
London similar to Paris, but also has the advantage of a more extensive subway... Plus many houses in England have hidden bolt holes and tunnels to the local church or cathedral for the Catholic priest to run away and escape through, all built during the reformation...
But my favourite is Edinburgh. It's tunnels are more modern. Edinburgh is quite flat to walk around but this is because it is built around bridges connecting all the hills. The home of the skyscraper is New York, but huge edifices of stone 8 stories high, so the top of the house would be street level are common in Edinburgh...
The low life, the cults, the murderers, (in the case of Edinburgh) the body snatchers, would all be found below the street...
Much of modern day Manchester's built on top of tunnels that used to carry the Irwell through the city in Victorian times, and then there's the WWII air raid shelters and Guardian cold war communications tunnels - they're still rediscovering those to this day. I always wanted to visit the Edinburgh Closes, there are some spectacularly grim stories there.
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The real world is always the more stranger...
Rome is full... FULL of underground passageways, rooms and vaults. The reason being that people built on the detritus and ruins left by the people before. Rome now is a good 100 meters higher (need to check this number) than Ancient Rome. They also built viaducts, sewers and rudimentary heating systems underground.
Paris also has a vast network of tunnels and catacombs. Possibly even more than Rome, as they were purposefully built...
London similar to Paris, but also has the advantage of a more extensive subway... Plus many houses in England have hidden bolt holes and tunnels to the local church or cathedral for the Catholic priest to run away and escape through, all built during the reformation...
But my favourite is Edinburgh. It's tunnels are more modern. Edinburgh is quite flat to walk around but this is because it is built around bridges connecting all the hills. The home of the skyscraper is New York, but huge edifices of stone 8 stories high, so the top of the house would be street level are common in Edinburgh...
The low life, the cults, the murderers, (in the case of Edinburgh) the body snatchers, would all be found below the street...