Bourse de Commerce

Housing the Paris chamber of commerce, this trade centre for coffee and sugar was built as a grain market in 1767. The circular building was then covered by a wooden dome, replaced by an avant-garde iron structure in 1809. In his 1831 novel Notre-Dame de Paris, Victor Hugo summed up the building thus: 'Le dôme de la Halle-au-Blé est une casquette de jockey anglais sur une grande échelle.'