The documentary Le Ventre de Paris, by Eve Vanderstegen, which takes the title of the famous novel by Emile Zola published in 1873, ends with the evocation of the destruction, in 1971, of the old Baltard halls, in the center of Paris , in the district of the Saint-Eustache church, where this market had existed for centuries, and of the celebration which tried to avert the painful loss of this jewel commissioned by Napoleon III from the young architect Victor Baltard, winner of a competition in 1848, and built from 1854.

But the purpose of this long and rich documentary, in which numerous specialists (architects, town planners, historians) intervene, goes far beyond the case of the Baltard pavilions to retrace the long history of the Parisian central market since the 12th century. Located on the Ile de la Cité, it was then moved to a vacant lot outside the fortifications that surrounded the perimeter of the city. It is there that he “will remain for eight centuries, for better or for worse”, specifies the commentary of the film by Eve Vanderstegen.

Over time, one to two thirds of foodstuffs (including wheat) were transported via the Seine (whose water, until the 18th century, remained drinkable) and the port located below the Hôtel de Ville . Mills are built around the city and, since “from the pavement to the earth there was only one step”, market gardening surrounds the gates of the city in communes like Montmartre which will then be annexed by the capital.

In the 19th century, the vegetable plains of some 2,000 hectares provided three-quarters of Paris’ supply of fruit and vegetables. As Sabine Barles, professor of urban planning and development at the University of Paris-I-Panthéon-Sorbonne, explains, we then see a kind of “mutualism between town and country”, an osmosis of Paris with its animals and the agricultural world.

Living with animals

The exchanges favored by this proximity constitute short circuits and virtuous cycles before the letter. And the beasts cohabited with humans until the 20th century, as evidenced by photos and films, even creating traffic jams in the streets. The milk is milked on site, in storefront cowsheds, and the animals slaughtered in the backyards. The haulms and peelings feed the animals; excrement, urine and sludge make up manure. With the inevitable collateral olfactory and sanitary inconveniences.

Human remains sometimes add their cadaverous gases: before becoming a flower and food market in 1788, the Place de la Fontaine-des-Innocents, located in the current 1st arrondissement of Paris, was the largest necropolis in Europe. Due to the influx of bodies, the mass graves overflowed, the ground sank and the bones were transported to the catacombs, while the cemetery was razed.

Things were taken over in the 19th century by Napoleon 1st, who set up five remote slaughterhouses (two on the left bank, three on the right bank) and had a wheat market built on the site of the future Bourse du commerce, whose wooden dome burned down and was replaced in 1811 by a new copper structure, signed by François-Joseph Bélanger, making the place a “building worthy of an imperial capital”.

Between 1800 and 1850, the population of Paris doubled, but the capital remains “quite close to the idea that we have of a medieval city”, recalls Bertrand Lemoine, architectural historian at the CNRS, because of rudimentary sewage system. Napoleon III and Baron Georges Eugène Haussmann revolutionized urban planning by applying their security and hygiene ideas. This will result, in particular, the Baltard halls.

speak loudly

The last part of the film, always so well documented and commented on, is probably the most touching, because it deals with a still recent story of the end of the Halles district, which many Parisians today have witnessed and whose photographer Robert Doisneau captured the last days. Among them, Jean-François Legaret, former mayor of the 1st arrondissement of Paris, from 2000 to 2020, who vividly recounts his memories of the old halls, of its microcosm, of its uses, of its colorful speech. Or the son of a Breton “boss” who retired when the halls were transferred to Rungis in 1969.

The images of the halls being dismantled, in the middle of August 1971, are shocking, especially when we know how these structures, which were totally modern in their time, were replaced… Archive images recall what happened there between the time of the closure and the destruction (shows, skiing, games for children). Before being filled, the hole in the halls was even to host the filming of a parody western, Touche pas à la femme blanche! (1974), by Marco Ferreri…