Anyone who didn’t get to visit Paris fifty years ago never got to see the Les Halles market, but the legend and the stories are still here, as if it all happened just last year.
The History of Les Halles
In 1183, King Philip Augustus of France built a covered market in Paris, on land partly confiscated from Jews, where merchants mainly traded in textiles. He called it Halles. Within a few years, this market became a diverse market that also included food, and it grew into the largest market in Paris. As the city expanded over the years, the market, which had been on the edge of town when it was founded, found itself at the very center. Fish, meat and vegetables took up a growing share of a market that had begun as a place for textiles and dry goods.
More and more food stalls joined the market, and by the 15th century it had become the central food market of Paris. Food prices across the city were even set according to the prices at Les Halles.
In the 16th century, the impressive Gothic cathedral of Saint-Eustache was built near the market. In the 18th century, a huge round structure called the Halle aux Blés was built on the western side of the market, intended for trading corn and grain. Later, the place became an exchange for trading all kinds of grains. The building was eventually renovated and upgraded, becoming one of the icons of Paris in its own right.
In 1870, a major renovation took place, and the Halles de Baltard were built by the Haussmannian architect Victor Baltard, in the form of 12 huge halls designed with 81 metal and glass arches.
Each hall was dedicated to a category of goods, such as fish (Pavillon de la Marée) or poultry (Pavillon de la Volaille), as well as meat, charcuterie and offal, vegetables and fruit, bread, cheeses and butter, and so on. The market itself spilled out beyond the halls into the surrounding streets, covering a huge area at the heart of the city. The vision behind it came from Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann. The complex provided a livelihood for more than five thousand people, many of whom came from all over France to try their luck in the capital.
Tons of agricultural produce arrived daily from every region of France. Trading at the market began every day at one o’clock in the morning and continued all day until 8:00 p.m. The area became the liveliest, most vibrant neighborhood in Paris, surrounded by dozens of workers’ restaurants and cafés open 24 hours a day (La Poule au Pot, Le Café Pierre, La Cloche des Halles, Le Chien qui Fume, Au Chou Vert, Au Pied de Cochon). Some of them even offered beds and lodging for tired merchants (a small number of the restaurants and shops that once surrounded Les Halles and fed its workers and visitors are still standing and operating to this day).
The Les Halles market was the culinary shopping center of Paris for 800 years!!
The People Who Made the Market
The writer Émile Zola, who was captivated by the market and called it “the Louvre of the people,” wrote a 19th-century novel that gave the place the nickname that would stick with it for years to come: “the belly of Paris” (Le Ventre de Paris). The Greek painter Nonda used to paint on canvas there, using charcoal and a brush dipped in cow’s blood or spleen juice. The market’s butchers would donate the raw materials to him.
So who were the tradespeople of the market, back in the day?
- The porters: the strongest and most prominent figures of the market used to wear wide-brimmed hats, so they could be spotted from afar and hired for their services. It’s said the strongest among them could carry up to 250 kilograms on his back.
- The cart pushers: earned a few coins hauling carts loaded with goods through the maze of passages in the huge market, from point to point (you can see the carts in two of the attached photos).
- The stackers: earned their bread arranging pyramids of fruits and vegetables in the sales halls.
- The egg inspectors: holding a status similar to police officers, they counted, measured and checked the quality of the eggs sold at the market.
- The guards: in exchange for a few coins, these women watched over goods that had already been sold and were temporarily stored in a holding area at the center of the market called Le Carreau.
- The rag-and-bone traders: a group who wandered the halls collecting leftovers (with the help of garbage truck drivers). They would boil the scraps they gathered and sell the cooked waste to the hard-up masses.
The End of Les Halles
Over time, as modernization brought a better quality of life to a dense city, the Les Halles market turned into a nuisance of overcrowding, filth and poor sanitary conditions, noise and smells. But the main problem was traffic congestion, caused by locating a market of this scale at the center of a modern city that had also become a world tourism hub.
It was decided that it was no longer appropriate to run such a huge wholesale and retail market in the city center. So in 1969, the bulldozers moved in on Les Halles and demolished the entire market complex, along with all the memories and history preserved within its walls.
Remarkably, all of this was done against the wishes of the area’s own residents, who found themselves living for a decade next to a giant hole in the ground until construction was finally completed. Mass protests by residents were part of this historic chapter.
In place of the market, a massive underground shopping mall was built, called the Forum des Halles. The Les Halles metro station also remained, as part of the Châtelet station complex, the city’s largest multi-level hub of metro and RER lines, completed in 1977.
The whole site was covered with a landscaped garden where many people spend time year-round. Elements of the garden’s design preserve, as a kind of memorial, the arch architecture of Victor Baltard, the architect who built the 19th-century version of the market that survived right up to its historic final day.
The Centre Pompidou, crowned with its startling (and, in my opinion, somewhat dated) exposed pipework, was built on the ruins of the market’s eastern section, and today hosts some of the city’s best exhibitions. The market itself was exiled by President Charles de Gaulle to a huge modern complex called Rungis, south of the city near Orly Airport.
Rungis: The New Wholesale Market
This market is nothing like what Les Halles once was, because it’s the largest and most central international food market in all of Europe. It’s a massive complex covering quite a few square kilometers, opening every day at 2:00 a.m., employing 16,000 people, with 26,000 trucks and vehicles passing through daily to transport food. Welcome to the largest food market in the world, this is practically a city of its own!!
The Rungis market was built right next to a major train station and next to Orly Airport, allowing goods to be shipped internationally, to and from Rungis and the entire world, within hours.
Those of us who aren’t food industry professionals don’t have access to this complex. Only buyers and suppliers who work there are allowed in, and private individuals can’t buy there, either on site or through their website. I know there are unique culinary tours that take visitors to Rungis with a guide, so apparently that’s one way to see the place in action. I can’t vouch for it firsthand, though, since I haven’t been there myself.
When fish and seafood are caught off the coast of Normandy, they pass through Rungis on their way to restaurants and shops in Paris or anywhere else. The same goes for meats, cheeses, wines and every other food product.
So beyond the interesting general knowledge, what’s the real takeaway here? Something that teaches us about culinary culture: Rungis is closed on Sundays, which means fresh goods don’t reach Paris restaurants that day. So a good, high-quality restaurant in Paris (one that’s open on Sundays) won’t serve fish and seafood on Sundays, since freshness matters so much for that kind of product. Something worth keeping in mind.
The Legend and Memory of Paris’s Wholesale Market Live On
Is anything left of the original Les Halles buildings?
Only one of the original market halls was preserved as it was, known today as the Pavillon Baltard. It was moved in its entirety to the Paris suburb of Nogent-sur-Marne, where it’s preserved as a national monument and serves as a concert hall (ZZ Top, Bob Marley, Iron Maiden and Thin Lizzy have all performed there).
The Forum des Halles mall built in its place was renovated and expanded in 2010, then renovated again ahead of 2018, becoming the city’s second most visited mall, with 42 million visitors a year. It’s a dizzying maze of floors, passages and shops. Personally, I get lost there every time.
The Les Halles market still holds the status of a legendary brand in the Parisian imagination. Many years have passed, but the memory hasn’t faded. It’s still on everyone’s lips, and everyone remembers and says it was there, and that it mattered, even though many of the people who say so never actually lived through its era. It’s hard to think of another food market so preserved in the historical memory fifty years after it closed. On the other hand, it’s just as hard to think of a food market that held its reign for 800 years!
Want to Stay in the Les Halles Area?
The Les Halles area is one of the best places to stay in Paris, for three main reasons:
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