She possessed the energy of a power plant and an extraordinary courage to fight adversity. The Divine Sarah as she was known worldwide, was a woman of many talents, and even more eccentricities. Sarah Bernhardt, the drama queen who conquered the world Since the first video is no longer available, here is a replacement: Let the pictures talk and enjoy the forever-gone local color: In the twelve hours of the never-changing routine, thirty thousand tonnes of merchandise have changed hands. At noon, following a feverish trading, the market closes for cleaning, to be reopened again at midnight. Old people from the neighborhood rummage through the organic garbage to gather ingredients for their soup. At 9:00 AM the market opens for shoppers. Around 4:00 AM, the Paris elite drops in for the famous onion soup, to rub shoulders with the market workers after having drunk champagne at some glitterati party. The merchandise is displayed, awaiting auctions. No English translation is available, so here is what we see:Īt midnight, when the Halles open, the first delivery trucks arrive. (All twenty of them in one e-volume are available on Amazon for the ridiculous price of US 2.99).Ī close look at the famous marketplace before it disappeared forever is provided by the 1950s documentary Twelve Hours in Halles posted below. It is a must read for researchers of this period, as are all Zola’s novels. Author Emile Zola closely described this anthill of human activity in his 1873 realistic novel Le Ventre de Paris (The Belly of Paris). An entire chapter in Paris history was closed in 1971 with the destruction of this central market. Les Halles were the commercial heart of Paris, a place of exchange and supply to the abundant life that had developed over the centuries.
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