Les Halles and St Eustache

I'm woefully behind in recounting the adventures my mother and I had so here's the next one on the list: Mother requested to go someplace she'd never been, so we picked an area and wandered.  This is always a good idea in Paris.

Fortunately, the chosen area - Les Halles - is a very interesting one.  You might say, "Oh hey, as an English speaker I recognize that word!  Halls!"  Indeed.  Les Halles used to be the place to go in Paris if you wanted fresh produce.  Or meat, dairy, fish, herbs, flowers, live birds, cloth...you get the idea.  And when I say "used to be" I mean, from 1183 when this area was established by the king as a market to 1971 when the huge iron rows (ie, halls) of stalls were demolished.  Yes, almost 800 years of all your shopping needs.

I am no expert on Les Halles but as I understand it the area always had rows upon rows of these:

You might very well be wondering, if this market is so old and stayed in business so long, why demolish it in the 70s?  I don't have a great answer to that, mostly because I am not inclined to research it at the moment.  But I think I can give a bit of information that could form a vague hypothesis.

In the 12th century Paris was obviously much smaller than it is today - it started in the small central area immediately around the river.  Over the centuries Paris absorbed many of the surrounding suburbs/smaller villages into itself and now they are parts of what is considered "central Paris."  Even where I lived last time (the 13th arr) was a sleepy suburb of Paris in the 1830s-40s, though now no one would ever say it's not part of Paris.  This started happening at a faster rate a few centuries after the establishment of Les Halles, though.

So when Paris was just this little area Les Halles served most of the people - all classes came here to buy their supplies and it's within easy distance of all the important buildings of the time.  When expansion really took hold, in the 18th and 19th centuries, it simply wouldn't have been convenient for people who lived farther away to trek to the center to buy their groceries, and besides, most of the absorbed villages had their own markets that remained after they were integrated into Paris.  Today every neighborhood has its own open air market, and I can't imagine that's a new development at all.

My other hypothesis is that the nature of the area around Les Halles changed drastically over time, especially during the 19th century.  Les Halles and its surrounding area basically controlled the country known as France at the time of its establishment and for centuries after.  The royal family lived smack in the center of Paris; their government buildings were there, they worshiped and gave alms there, and of course their court and officers lived near them.  The central authority in France shifted to Versailles starting in the 17th century and the important buildings served more as local authorities or historical sites.

In the mid 19th century Paris was in need of modernization and medieval central Paris was one of the places where the drive was particularly strong.  In the 1850's there were massive construction projects in the area and it began to take on its modern shape, which is very much not conducive to an open market.  By the early 20th century the stalls had mostly been abandoned and were taking up lots of valuable property.

Reuters claims Les Halles "is now a 10-acre twilight zone, avoided by Parisians and tourists alike.
Drug pushers and gangs hang out under the dark and malodorous alcoves..."  Not sure if that's a bit of an exaggeration.

Right now they have a massive project going on to convert the former Les Halles into a sort of huge community center (in reaction to the above sentiments): there is already a big underground mall and...some other stuff that is unclear to me but meant to serve Paris' equivalent of the "bridge and tunnel" crowd rather than Parisians.  They're pretty unhappy with the whole thing.  The area, and the new construction, is a bit of an eyesore.

 So we marveled at its weirdness for a little and proceeded to go underneath the project and out the other side to explore this church, St Eustache, that used to serve both nobles and commoners coming from Les Halles for a long time.


It was really a quite extraordinary church, little known to tourists, and probably one of the most active churches I've seen here in Paris.  They hold a lot of concerts and seem to have a pretty large number of adherents.

St Eustache is younger than most of the important church in Paris - most of its construction was during the Renaissance and after.  So it has a much more open feel than most Gothic cathedrals and a few more modern touches.

I don't have a lot of photos of the inside as people were setting up a lot of tech stuff in through the middle aisles, but here are a few.  Stained glass (the second is particularly pretty and modern) and part of the seating area.  I was particularly delighted by the alter containing the piece of art in the last photo - it was donated by someone in the early 70s, after the demolition of Les Halles.  The guy seemed super upset that the market was destroyed and wrote a personal essay about it posted next to this.  The work itself represents the merchants being forced out of the area, carrying their goods.  Obviously it didn't go down like that, but like I said, this guy was pissed.

 Just outside the church is a very pleasant park that was full of Parisians picnicking (with wine of course) and lounging around.  The gardens are very pretty and somewhat rare for this area of Paris.  In this first shot my mom was mostly taking a picture of the black cat there but I thought it was a good shot.  The second is an interesting (and large) sculpture in the park.

This post is getting super long so I'll wrap up: there were a couple of other notable thing about that day.  We actually went inside the Tour St Jacques - if you recall, people are always asking me what that thing is and why it's there but I never had an answer.  Well, it's one of the towers put up along the route of St Jacques, who traveled on a pilgrimage all around Europe, eventually ending at a shrine in northern Spain.  There is really nothing inside it, but it's pretty.  See my June 28 post for a picture of it at night.

Secondly, we got amazing hot chocolate on the way, which is great as I'm always on the lookout for new cafes.  It was done "in the old style" which apparently means they give you hot milk and what is basically fudge to melt in it to taste.  Yum.