LES HALLES

Description

Essentials about Les Halles in brief

Les Halles is the bustling center of Paris, where tens of thousands of people go shopping, engage in leisure activities, and arrive and depart by public transportation every day. It is the former site of Paris’ central wholesale market in the heart of the city, located between the Louvre and the Centre Pompidou, and also just a stone’s throw from Île de la Cité. The wholesale market was demolished in 1971 and replaced by two huge structures in the 1970s: Forum des Halles, an underground shopping center, for the first, and Châtelet-Les-Halles, the new central transportation hub of Paris, for the second.

The attractions of Les Halles

With over 150 stores and 40 million visitors a year, Forum des Halles is France’s largest shopping center. Here one can find both an enormous selection of flagship stores of all well-known French and international brands and a wide range of gastronomic offers. Moreover, Forum des Halles is not only a shopping destination, but also a destination for leisure activities. There is a sports hall, an Olympic swimming pool, a cinema complex, a media center, a center for hip-hop, a conservatory and many more facilities related to sports and culture. With over 750,000 travelers, the Gare de Châtelet – Les Halles station is the busiest station in Paris. Since numerous Métro and RER lines converge here, Châtelet – Les Halles is also the city’s most important transfer station.

The redesign of Les Halles

Since the Les Halles complex, which was built in the 1970s, was considered by many people to be a soulless, bombastic concrete jungle, plans began in the early 21st century to remodel the entire area. In 2016, the work was finally completed and Les Halles now shines with a new design. Both the Forum Les Halles shopping center was redesigned and covered with a huge wave-shaped glass structure. The train station was also massively rebuilt with new entrances, a new concourse and improved routing.