The Invention of Paris by Eric Hazan

grave opened for the first time, the many beds of corpses suddenly stirred, the debris of skeletons, the sparse lights fuelled by the planks of coffins, the moving shadows of funeral crosses, this fearsome precinct suddenly lit up in the silence of the night.’ 50
    The Paris landscape can be understood from observing the development of the Halles site over the centuries. It is impossible to avoid a sense of regret for the ridiculous fate of this place, which, as Sauval wrote centuries ago, ‘is full of everything: vegetables, the fruit of gardens and fields, fish from river and sea, things that can assist the convenience and delights of life, and indeed all that is most excellent, exquisite and rare in land and air, arriving in Paris and taken there’. But despite such regret, we should not forget the circumstances that led to this end. Louis Chevalier observed it from the inside, hearing all the arguments brought up in bad faith in favour of destruction:
The economic argument, the most mysterious and obscure . . . was the one most often cited. And then public health. The legendary dirtiness of the Halles . . . I cite the words that I found in these speeches as they come, without trying to put them in order – as one might arrange goods for sale, vegetables for example, in harmonious constructions that, under the striking light of lamps, exude order, beauty, taste, and indeed, to be sure, cleanliness . . . To dramatize things still more, rats . . . And to complete this spectacle à la Gustave Doré, Villon’s fat prostitutes, whowere certainly not very discreet, and some of whom even displayed their charms on the steps of Saint-Eustache. 51
    Chevalier went to see his old fellow student from the École Normale Supérieure, Georges Pompidou, whom he had dinner with from time to time: ‘It seemed to me – pure illusion, perhaps – that Pompidou, knowing how my ideas on the matter were quite the opposite of his own, cast me an inflexible and facetious glance that undoubtedly meant that with people of my sort, Parisians would still be stuck in the huts where Caesar found them.’
    Once the decision was made to transfer the market to Rungis, disaster was certain. The 1960s and ’70s were an all-time low for French architecture. Major commissions went to members of the Institut de France, to whom we owe – among other things – the administrative building on Boulevard Morland with its pergola, the Palais des Congrès at Porte Maillot, the Tour Montparnasse, the Radio building, and the Faculty of Sciences at Jussieu. And in a detrimental scissors effect, corruption and collusion within semipublic companies, between the promoters and scoundrels of Parisian Gaullism, was at its height. It was not enough, therefore, to pull down Baltard’s pavilions: to make the operation profitable, the destruction had to spread far wider. The space between Rue de Turbigo and what remained of Rue Rambuteau, and the whole region between what was Rue Berger and Rue de la Ferronnerie, were replaced by office blocks and flats so aggressive in their ugliness that you have to go a long way – the far end of the Italie quarter or the Front de Seine – to find their match. On top of all this, the ‘gardens’ on the site of Les Halles also show what decrepitude French landscapists had reached in their art. Hemmed in by mutilated streets, decked out in the worst panoply of postmodernism, these ‘spaces’ transform the old itineraries of Paris into assault courses, by their complex arrangement of metal barriers, ventilation columns, walkways overlooking ditches of wretched plantations, the orifices of underground roads, and fountains clogged up with empty drink cans. As for the underground shopping mall that goes by the noble name of Forum, the most surprising thing is that its author is still classed as an architect. But the whole ensemble is so badly