Grands Boulevards, passages and Les Halles
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Passage Jouffroy

Built on the site of the city's old ramparts, the Grands Boulevards extend in a long arc from the Église de la Madeleine in the west to the Bastille in the east. Once highly fashionable thoroughfares where letout Paris would come to promenade and seek entertainment, they're still a vibrant and colourful part of the city, with their brasseries, theatres and cinemas.

The streets off the Grands Boulevards constitute the city's main commercial and financial district. Right at the heart of the area stand the solid institutions of the Banque de France and the Bourse, while just to the north, beyond the glittering Opéra Garnier, are the large department stores Galeries Lafayette and Printemps. Rather more well-heeled shopping is concentrated on the rue St-Honoré in the west and the streets around elegant place Vendôme, lined with top couturiers, jewellers and art dealers. Scattered around the whole of the Grands Boulevards area are the delightful passages – nineteenth-century arcades with glass roofs and tiled floors that hark back to shopping from a different era.

In the south, the Palais Royal arcades and gardens provide a perfect retreat from the traffic and make a handy shortcut through to the Bibliothèque Nationale. Further east, the Sentier district is the centre of the rag trade, while nearby rue St-Denis sees trade of a seedier kind. Just south of here is Les Halles, once the food market of Paris, though no former trader would recognize it as such. Of all the changes to the city in the last 25 years, the transformation of Les Halles into an underground RER/métro station and shopping centre is the least inspired – though overground it does provide some much-needed greenery.