An 'eyesore' in Paris gets $1bn spruce up

Swapping burgers for lobster souffle and rusty welding for a state-of-the-art canopy roof, Paris' mayor this month unveiled a $1 billion revamp of the city's dilapidated main shopping and transport complex, Les Halles.

Paris authorities view the building project - which made central Paris a construction site pockmarked with cranes for seven years - as an opportunity to gentrify the 70s complex that was often voted among the city's biggest eyesores by disgruntled Paris residents, and also attract a share of the millions of tourists who visit the city every year.

The previous incarnation of Les Halles became associated more with the myriad gangs of youths who traveled in on regional trains from the less-affluent suburbs to hang out there than it was for its rich past - as the gilded food market and shelter the French king would use to impress merchants in the 12th Century and the culinary heart of the city that 19th-century novelist Emile Zola famously called "the belly of Paris".