An Afternoon in Les Halles: Walking Through Paris and My Own Memories
There are some places in Paris that I visit because they are beautiful, some because they are historic, and others because they simply feel familiar. Les Halles is all three for me.
This afternoon I found myself walking through this part of Paris again, and almost immediately I began remembering other walks here, especially the time I spent exploring this neighborhood with my son and my soon to be daughter-in-law. There were funny antics in the park, lots of laughter, and even eyelash wishes. I will have to find the link to that earlier adventure and add it here, because walking these paths again brought those memories surprisingly close.
Beginning at the Bourse de Commerce
My walk took me past the magnificent Bourse de Commerce, a building that seems determined to make you stop and look up.
Its pale stone façade, enormous fluted columns, elaborate sculptural pediment and beautiful black-and-gold entrance are very much a reminder of monumental Paris. Today the building houses the Pinault Collection of contemporary art, which makes the contrast between its historic exterior and its modern purpose especially interesting.
And then there was the tree.
Standing immediately in front of this grand classical building was a stark, leafless tree-like sculpture, its dark branches supporting enormous stone forms. Against the creamy façade and bright blue-and-white September sky, it looked almost surreal. People stopped beneath it, photographed it and walked around it trying to understand what they were seeing.
That is something Paris does particularly well. It doesn’t always separate its centuries. Instead, it lets them have a conversation.
Into the Garden
From all that stone and architectural grandeur, my walk softened as I moved toward the green space beside Les Halles.
Suddenly I was beneath trees.
The paths stretched ahead under a leafy canopy, with patches of September beginning to appear in the foliage. Some leaves were still deep green while others had started turning brown and rust. Sunlight filtered through the branches and scattered shadows across the pale pathways.
This was where the memories really began.
I remembered being here with “the kids”. I remembered us being silly. I remembered the park and the photographs and the kind of completely inconsequential family moments that somehow become the things you remember years later.
And, of all things, I remembered eyelash wishes.
You know the ritual. Someone finds a loose eyelash, puts it on a fingertip, makes a wish and blows it away.
Such a tiny thing.
But that is exactly how memory works sometimes. You can travel thousands of miles and stand before one of the great monuments of Paris, yet what comes rushing back is an eyelash balanced on a fingertip and the people you were laughing with when someone made the wish.
Paris Above and Below
Eventually the quiet garden paths led me toward something completely different: the Forum des Halles.
The enormous modern canopy announces the transition immediately. Its sweeping, layered roof seems to float above the complex, curving and dipping rather than behaving like a conventional building.
And beneath my feet was another Paris entirely.
Les Halles is one of the city’s great transportation crossroads, with the Châtelet-Les Halles complex connecting Métro and RER lines beneath an enormous shopping and entertainment center. Above ground, however, you can walk through gardens, cafés and pedestrian streets without fully appreciating just how much activity is taking place underground.
I love that contrast.
There is historic Paris around you, contemporary Paris above you, and an extraordinary transportation machine operating beneath you.
The area was busy but not frantic. People sat on the large stone blocks beneath the canopy. Others hurried toward trains. Bicycles filled the racks. Delivery vehicles maneuvered through streets largely dominated by pedestrians. People stopped to talk, shop or simply watch everyone else go by.
And tucked into one of the curved storefronts beneath the Canopée was something I had specifically come looking for: LEGO. I had discovered there was a LEGO store nearby and naturally started wondering whether there might be something particularly French that I could take home for the granddaughters.
Grandmother priorities.
Look Up
As I continued walking, I spotted something that would have been very easy to miss.
High on the corner of an old stone building were several small pieces of street art.
One looked like a pixelated alien straight out of an early video game. Nearby were a red bow, an eye and other small graphic pieces attached to the stone façade.
They were tiny compared with the building. And I talk about these more in another post.
But once I noticed them, I couldn’t stop looking.
That is another reason I enjoy walking Paris rather than simply traveling from attraction to attraction. Paris rewards people who look up, look down and occasionally turn around.
The grand architectural statement may be directly in front of you, but the little surprise may be ten feet above your head.
Back Into the Neighborhood
Eventually the futuristic canopy began to disappear behind me and the streets returned to a more intimate scale.
There were café terraces with their familiar woven chairs, red awnings stretching across the sidewalks, restaurant tables waiting for the next meal service and pedestrians wandering between them. One wonderfully narrow, half-timbered façade was squeezed between much larger neighboring buildings, a little survivor from another architectural vocabulary.
This is the Les Halles I remember.
Not simply a shopping center. Not simply a transportation hub. Not simply the site of what was once the enormous food market famously called the “belly of Paris.”
It is a neighborhood made of layers.
Old Paris and new Paris.
Grand architecture and pixelated street art.
Formal museums and busy cafés.
Quiet trees and one of Europe’s great underground transit hubs.
And for me, another layer that doesn’t appear on any map: family memories.
I came out for an afternoon walk through Les Halles, but somewhere between the Bourse de Commerce, the trees, the Canopée and those familiar café-lined streets, I found myself walking through an earlier visit too.
I could almost see the three of us again, laughing and carrying on in the park.
And making eyelash wishes.
I don’t remember what was wished for.
But looking back now, perhaps some wishes are simply that moments like those will stay with us.
Apparently, this one did.
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