THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE GREAT MARKETS
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.
[Illustration: 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.
Rue Montmartre, crossing Rue Étienne-Marcel and going on into the
arrondissement II, dates at this end--its commencement--from the close
of the eleventh century. In Revolution days it was known as Rue
Mont-Marat! As long as Paris had fortified boundary walls there was
always a Porte Montmartre, moved northward three times, as the city
bounds extended. The Porte of Philippe-Auguste was where the house No.
30 now stands, and this part of the street was known then as Rue
Porte-Montmartre. The Passage de la Reine de Hongrie memorizes a certain
_dame de la Halle_ in whom Marie-Antoinette saw a remarkable likeness to
her mother, the Queen of Hungary. The woman became for her generation
“la Reine de Hongrie”--the alley where she dwelt was called by this
name. She shared not only the title but the fate of royalty: was
beheaded by the guillotine.
Rue Montorgueil, beginning here and leading to the higher ground called
when the Romans ruled in Gaul “Mons Superbus,” now the levelled
boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle and its surrounding streets, was known in the
thirteenth century as Mont Orgueilleux. In bygone days, the Parisians
strolled out to the Mont Orgueilleux to eat oysters. There was a famous
oyster-bed on the site of the house now razed where, in 1780, was born
that exquisite song and ballad writer, Béranger. The ancient house, No.
32, is said to have been the home of the architect, Jean Goujon. The
little side-street Rue Mauconseil dates from 1250, and tradition says
its name is due to the _mauvais conseil_ given within the walls of the
hôtel de Bourgoyne, close by, which led to the assassination of the duc
d’Orléans by Jean Sans Peur. In Revolution days, therefore, it was
promptly renamed for the nonce Rue du Bon Conseil! At No. 48 we find a
famous tripe-eating house. No. 47 was once the Central Sedan Chair
Office. At No. 51 we see interesting signs over the door, and painted
panels signed by Paul Baudry within (1864). Nos. 64, 72 is the old
sixteenth-century inn, the “Compas d’Or,” and the famous restaurant
Philippe. The coachyard of the inn is little changed from the days when
coaches plied between that starting-place and Dreux. The restaurant du
Rocher de Cancale, at No. 78, dating from 1820, where the most
celebrated men of letters and art of the nineteenth century met and
dined, was at first “Le Petit Rocher,” then the successor of the ancient
restaurant at No. 59 dating from the eighteenth century, where the
_dîners du Caveau_ and the _dîners du Vaudeville_ were eaten by gay
literary and artistic _dîneurs_ of olden time.
Rue Turbigo is modern and makes us think regretfully of ancient streets
and of the apse of the church St-Elisabeth demolished to make way for
it. Turning down Rue St-Denis, the famous “Grande Chaussée de Monsieur
St-Denis” of ancient days, the road along which legend tells us the
saint, coming from the heights above, walked carrying his head after
decapitation, we find it, from this point to the vicinity of the
Châtelet, rich in historic buildings and vestiges of a past age. Kings
on their way to Notre-Dame entered Paris in state along this old road;
it was connected more or less closely with every political event of
bygone times, with Parisian pleasures too, for there of old the mystery
plays went on. Curious old streets and passages open out of it: at 279
the quaint Rue Ste-Foy. In the court of No. 222 we see the hôtel St.
Chaumont, its façade on boulevard Sebastopol, dating from 1630.
The church we come to at No. 92 dedicated to St. Leu and St. Gilles was
built in the early years of the thirteenth century on the site of an
earlier church, a dependent of the Abbaye St-Magloire close by,
suppressed at the Revolution. Subsequent restorations, and the building
in the eighteenth century of a subterranean chapel for the knights of
the Holy Sépulcre, have resulted in an interesting old church of mingled
Gothic and Renaissance style; its apse was lopped off to make way for
the modern boulevard Sébastopol. The would-be assassin Cadoudal hid for
three days crouched up against the figure of Christ in the chapel
beneath the chancel (1804). Rue des Lombards dates from the thirteenth
century, and at one or two of its houses, notably No. 62, we find an
underground hall with vaulted roof and Gothic windows. At No. 56 we see
an open corner. It is “ground accurst.” The house of two Protestant
merchants who in 1579 were put to death for their “evil practices!” once
stood there. Their dwelling was razed and a pyramid and crucifix were
set up on the spot, soon afterwards removed to the cemetery des
Innocents hard by.
The chemist’s shop at No. 44, “Au Mortier d’Or,” united now to its
neighbour “A la Barbe d’Or,” dates, as regards its foundation, from the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the window we see an open volume
printed in 1595 with the engraved portrait of the founder.
Rue des Innocents was opened in 1786 across the site of the graveyard of
the church des Saints-Innocents, founded in 1150 and which stood till
1790. More than a million bodies are said to have been buried in that
churchyard. In 1780 the cemetery was turned into a market-place. But it
was again used as a burial ground for victims of the Revolution of 1830.
Their bones lie now beneath the Colonne de Juillet on the Place de la
Bastille. The market-place became a square: “Le Square des Innocents.”
The fine old fountain dating from 1550, the work of the famous sculptors
Pierre Lescot and Jean Goujon, was taken from its site in the Rue
St-Denis, restored by the best sculptors of the day, and set up there in
1850. The beautiful portal of the ancient bureau des Marchandes-lingères
was placed there in more recent times. The ground floor of most of the
old houses of this street are ancient _charniers_, many of them built by
one Nicolas Flamel. Therein were laid in past days the bones
periodically gathered from the graveyard. The name “Cabaret du Caveau”
at No. 15 tells its own tale. In Rue Berger, formed along the line of
several demolished streets of old, we see some ancient signs, but little
else of interest. Old signs too, in Rue de la Cossonnerie, so named from
the _cossonniers_, i.e. poultry-merchants, whose market was here and
which was known as early as 1182 as Via Cochonerie. Rue des Prêcheurs is
another twelfth-century street and there we see many ancient houses:
Nos. 6-8, etc. Rue Pirouette, one of the most ancient of Paris streets,
recalls the days of the _pilori des Halles_, when its victims, forced to
turn from side to side, made _la pirouette_. Here the duc d’Angoulême
had his head cut off under Louis XI, and the duc de Nemours in 1477. At
No. 5 we see the ancient doorway of the demolished hôtellerie du Haume
(fourteenth century), at No. 9 was the cabaret de l’Ange Gabriel (now
razed), at No. 13 vestiges of an ancient mansion. A few old houses still
stand in the Rue de la Grande Truanderie (thirteenth century). Rue de la
Petite Truanderie, of the same date, was once noted for its old well,
“le Puits d’Amour,” in the small square half-way down the street, of old
the _truands’_ quarter (_see_ p. 56).