LES HALLES CENTRALES
THE legend telling us the great Paris Market was first called “les Alles”—no “H”—because everybody y allait, i.e. went there, need not be taken seriously. Even in remote mediæval times the markets had some covered premises or “Halles.” The earliest Paris market of which we have record takes us back to the year 1000, that momentous year predicted by sooth-sayers for the end of the world; few sowings, therefore, had been made the preceding season. The market stalls of that year were but scantily furnished. That ancient market lying along the banks of the Seine in the vicinity of the present Place St-Michel, and its successor on what was then Place de Grève (see [p. 95]) went by the curious name Palu. In ancient days, under Louis-le-Gros, the site of the immense erection and market-square we see now was known of old as le terrain des champeaux—the territory of little fields—land owned in part by the King, in part by ecclesiastical authorities, and bought for the great market in the twelfth century. The sale of herrings, wholesale and retail, goes on to-day on the very site set apart for fishmongers in the time of St. Louis. Rue Baltard, running through the centre of the pavilions, records the name of the architect of the present structure, which dates from 1856. Rue Antoine-Carême records the name of Napoléon I’s cook. Ancient streets surround us here on every side, old houses, curious old signs. Rue Berger is made up of several ancient streets united. The part of Rue Rambuteau bordering les Halles lies along the line of four thirteenth-century streets known of yore by old-world names. Rue des Halles, leading up to the Markets from the Rue Rivoli, a modern thoroughfare (1854), made along the course of ancient streets, has curious old streets leading into it: Rue des Déchargeurs, a characteristic name, was opened in 1310. The short Rue du Plat d’Étain opening out of it dates from 1300, when it was Rue Raoul Tavernier. Rue de la Ferronnerie, extremely narrow at that period, is noted as the scene of the assassination of Henri IV in front of a house on the site of No. 11 (14 May, 1610). From the days of Louis IX the street was, as its name implies, the resort of ironmongers. Good old ironwork is still seen on several of the houses. Rue Courtalon (thirteenth century) is entirely made up of ancient houses. Rue de la Lingerie, formerly Rue des Gantiers, was a well-built street in the time of Henri II, but most of the houses seen there now are modern. Rue Prouvaires—from provoire, old French for prêtres—thirteenth century, is referred to in the time of Louis IX as one of the finest streets of Paris. It extended formerly to the church St-Eustache. Of the old streets once along the course of the modern Rue du Pont-Neuf all traces have been swept away.
PORTAIL DE ST-EUSTACHE
To the north side of Les Halles, we find Rue Mondétour, dating from 1292, but many of its ancient houses have been razed; modern ones occupy their site. A dancing-hall in this old street was the meeting-place of French Protestants before the passing of the Edict of Nantes. No. 14 has cellars in two stories.
The church St-Eustache is often familiarly referred to by the market women as Notre-Dame des Halles. The crypt, once the chapel Ste-Agnes, the nucleus of the grand old church, dating from 1200, secularized but still forming one with the sacred building, is a fruiterer’s shop—truly St-Eustache is the church of the Markets. The edifice as it stands dates as a whole from the seventeenth century. Gothic in its grand lines, very strikingly impressive, it has a Jesuit frontage, substituted for the Gothic façade originally planned, and Renaissance ornamentation within. The church was mercilessly truncated in the eighteenth century to allow for the making and widening of surrounding streets.
Rue du Jour under other names has existed from the early years of the thirteenth century, but was then close up against the city wall of Philippe-Auguste. Nos. 3, 4, 5, 7, 11 are ancient, and No. 25, with its traces of bygone ages, is believed to be on the site of the house where Charles V made from time to time a séjour, hence the name, truncated, of the street.
Rue Vauvilliers, until 1864 Rue du Four St-Honoré, dates from the thirteenth century. Here, at No. 33, lodged young Buonaparte, the future Emperor, at the ancient hôtel de Cherbourg, in 1787. To-day it is a butcher’s shop. Several of the houses have curious signs and other vestiges of past days. The circular colonnaded street we come to now, Rue de Viarmes, was built in 1768 by the Prévôt des Marchands whose name it bears. It surrounds the Bourse de Commerce built in 1889 on the site of the Halles aux Blés erected in the first instance in 1767, twice burnt to the ground and twice subsequently rebuilt on the site of the famous hôtel de Nesle where la Reine Blanche, mother of St. Louis, is said to have died in 1252. L’hôtel de Nesle was inhabited later by the blind King of Bohemia, killed at Crécy, and subsequently by other persons of note, then was taken to form part of the Couvent des Filles Pénitentes, appropriated with several adjoining hôtels in after years by Catherine de’ Medici (see [p. 9]). After the Queen’s death, as the possession of the comte de Bourbon, it was known as l’hôtel de Soissons; in 1749 it was razed to the ground. One ancient pillar, la Colonne de l’Horoscope, with its interior flight of steps still stands.
Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in the days when its upper part was the ancient Rue Platrière, the lower Rue Grenelle-St-Honoré, counted among its inhabitants Rousseau, Bossuet, Marat, Fragonard, Boucher, the duchesse de Valentinois, and other noted personages. Most of the ancient dwellings have been replaced by modern constructions. Where the General Post Office now stands, extending down Rue du Louvre, the comte de Flandre had a fine mansion in the thirteenth century. Destroyed in 1543, it was replaced by another fine hôtel, which became the Paris post office in 1757, rebuilt in 1880. We see interesting architectural traces of past days at Nos. 15, 18, 19, 20, 33, 56, 64, 68. This brings us to Rue Étienne-Marcel, its name recalling the stirring and tragic history of the Prévôt de Paris at the time of the Jacquerie-Marcel, in revolt against the Dauphin; Charles V had the two great nobles, Jean de Conflans and Robert de Clermont, killed in the King’s presence, and was himself struck down dead when on the point of giving Paris over to Charles-le-Mauvais in 1358. But the name only is ancient, the street is entirely modern, cut across the line where ancient streets once ran. Some few old-time vestiges remain here and there, notably the Tour de Jean Sans Peur at No. 20, all that is left of the hôtel de Bourgoyne, built in the thirteenth century, to which the tower was added in 1405; it was partially destroyed in the sixteenth century, while what still stood became a theatre, the chief Paris play-house, the cradle of the Comédie Française.