A fire broke out in the early hours of Monday morning and destroyed the Marché des Enfants Rouges, Paris's oldest surviving covered market, located in the Marais district of the French capital.
Ariel Weil, the mayor of central Paris, said the market had been "totally destroyed" in the blaze. "The worst was avoided: the fire did not spread to the surrounding buildings," he said. "But there is a lot of emotion. A lot of sadness."
According to reports, the fire broke out shortly after 3am, with firefighters alerted at 4.15am. More than 150 firefighters and 50 fire trucks were deployed to battle the blaze. Lt Col Pierre de Bouvier of the Paris fire service said much of the metal structure had collapsed and most of the stalls had been destroyed by flames. The cause of the fire was not yet known.
The market dated back to 1615, established during the reign of Louis XIII. It took its name from a nearby orphanage, the Hospice des Enfants Rouges, founded in 1536 by King Francis I and his sister Marguerite de Navarre, whose child residents were habitually dressed in red.
The structure was listed as a historic monument in 1982. It narrowly escaped demolition shortly afterwards when Paris city hall, then led by mayor Jacques Chirac, approved redevelopment plans that would have replaced it with an underground car park, a daycare facility and a community centre.
A campaign by local residents and neighbourhood associations, backed by intellectuals, writers, artists, filmmakers and photographers including Bertrand Tavernier and Willy Ronis, gathered tens of thousands of signatures in protest. The plans were eventually abandoned in the mid-1990s.
Rather than demolish the building, the city undertook a six-year renovation project costing 13 million francs, equivalent to approximately three million euros or 2.5 million pounds today. The work restored the market's historic wood and ironwork frame and glass roof. The market reopened as a food court in 2000.
Spanning approximately 1,000 square metres, the market hosted traditional stalls including a greengrocer, butcher, cheesemonger and fishmonger, alongside more than a dozen stands offering French, Lebanese, Moroccan, Japanese and other street food.
The current Time Out tourist guide described Les Enfants Rouges as "the coolest market in Paris." The US publication Food and Wine ranked it fifth worldwide for street food this year, placing it behind food courts in London, Bangkok, Lyon and Mexico City.
