The central phenylene ring o f I ,4-bis(3,4-dimethylphosphol-1-yobenzene undergoes [ I ,5] shifts around both phospholyl rings above 150°C to give 1,4-bis(3,4-dimethyl-SH-phosphol-2-yl)benzene, which can be trapped by tolane, [CpFe(CO)zlz, or Mn2 (CO)lo to yield the corresponding bis-1 -phosphanorbornadiene, bis-phosphafewocene, or bis-phosphacyman trene respectively. ture of the phosphole nucleus. The pyramidality of phosphorus reduces the cyclic delocalization within the 1-Hi-phosphole system and allows some overlap between the .n-dienic system and the (T orbital of the P-C exocyclic bond [ 6 ] .Recently, we became interested in all the possible techniques for building polyphosphole structures in order to create new polyphosphorus macrocycles, cages, and chains. Up to now, we have only been able to synthesize 2,2'-biphospholes 12, 71. In such a context, it was tempting to link together two phosphole rings via a para-phenylene bridge and to check whether it would be possible to promote the [ 1,5] sigmatropic shifts of the paraphenylene substituent around both phosphole rings of 1 in order to create new species derived from the original C-C bonded tricyclic structure 2 (Equation 2). The starting phosphole 1 was obtained by reaction of the recently discovered 1-cyano-3,4-dimethylphosphole 3 [8] with 1,4-diIn several previous papers [l-51, we have demonstrated that a 1-phenyl substituent could migrate from the phosphorus atom to the carbon atoms of a phosphole ring via a series of [1,5] sigmatropic shifts (Equation 1). These relatively easy migrations can be correlated with the pyramidal struc-1