Research on dark landscapes insist mostly on the sense of sight, as dark is primarily a seeable quality that comes as necessarily related to light. Nevertheless, in which ways darkness plays a role when it comes to the sonic apprehension of place, representations and experiences? The paper will first consider dark soundscapes through filmic representation by focusing on how sonic atmospheres of dark moments are staged in fiction, by ‘looking’ at the diegetic sounds of scenes taking place at dawn and night in urban settings. By doing so, it does not consist in having a close look at sonic events, or sound sources that might be specific of darkness, but intends rather to show that when it comes to staging, dark comes with specific sonic effects such as desynchronization, ubiquity, reverb and clarity. As the use of these effects is recurrent, it shows that they are not simple staging techniques, but also reveal shared representations of how dark urban place might sound. From there, the paper will, in a second time, criticize these quite restricted ways of sounding the dark urban landscapes in fiction, by showing how the dense understanding of dark soundscapes contribute to widen the one of urban atmospheres as synesthetic processes. To do so, a set of sonic recordings made along in situ interviews, in underground - passages, parkings, trains - locations, will be mobilized. They notably show how dark does not only qualify an amount of light, but also goes with specific sonic practices and relationship to place.