Paris' main wholesale food market stood here for nearly 800 years before being replaced by this underground shopping mall in 1971. Four floors of stores extend down to the city's busiest metro hub, while a massive renovation project – with an enormous golden-hued translucent canopy as centrepiece – is under way, with a target completion date of 2016.
Spilling out from the curvilinear, leaf-like rooftop will be new gardens designed by landscaper David Mangin, with pétanque and chess tables, a central patio and pedestrian walkways. The project will also open up the shopping centre, allowing for more natural light.
Renovation is being undertaken in stages; hence business should continue more or less as usual, with minimal disruption. Follow the project at www.parisleshalles.fr or pop into the information centre on place Joachim du Bellay, a pretty square pierced by the Fontaine des Innocents (1549). The multi-tiered Renaissance fountain is named after the Cimetière des Innocents, a cemetery formerly on this site from which two million skeletons were disinterred after the Revolution and transferred to the Catacombes.
