Les Halles is an area of Paris, located in the 1er arrondissement. It is named for the large central wholesale marketplace, which was demolished in 1971, to be replaced with an underground modern shopping precinct, the Forum des Halles. Special is that the open air center area is below street level, like a pit.

Beneath this lies the underground station Chatelet-Les-Halles, central hub of Paris’s express metro system, the RER.

Les Halles was the central Market in Paris. In 1183, King Philippe II Auguste enlarged the marketplace in Paris and built a shelter for the merchants, who came from all over to sell their wares. Known as Les Halles, for almost 700 years the masssive glass and iron building was the “stomach of Paris”.