Foto gentilmente concesse da Casa Editrice Bonechi

The oldest quarter of Paris, the busiest and most lively and the one which Emile Zola defined as the "stomach of Paris": this, in fact, was the site of the city's wholesale market for food products, ten pavilions in steel and cast iron which, in March 1969, were transferred to Rungis. So, in a new conception of the urban space, at the feet of the Gothic St.Eustache, arose the Forum, over forty thousand square metres of glass and aluminium, stairways in marble and escalators, developing over four underground levels around a quadrangular square in the open air. Inaugurated on 4th September 1979 and built according to the design of the two architects Claude Vasconi and Georges Pencreach, at the Forum there are boutiques selling clothing, objets d'art, gastronomy and household objects, as well as places of entertainment, restaurants, ten cinemas, banks and information centres. Four lines of the Metro underground cross here as well as two of the RER railway.
Fontaine des Innocents
Close to the Forum des Halles. This fountain, a masterpiece of the French Renaissance, was realised between 1547 and 1550 by Pierre Lescot and Jean Goujon.