Les Halles on the corner of Rue Baltard with Rue Berger, the Place des Halles and Rue des Halles. The market scene. The porters are waiting with their "diables" (barrows) for customers to hire them to deliver goods that they have purchased. One diable is piled high with crates. The diables were hired out by local firms who provided the very heavy, well-built wooden barrows ("devils") for the porters who worked at night and during the day in the giant central food market of Les Halles. Two sapeurs-pompiers from the Paris Fire Brigade are walking through the market with their purchases loaded on to their two-wheeled metal hand truck. The firemen would go round in pairs shopping in the market for the canteen at their Fire Station. Many crates are piled up on the corner of the pavement and spilling out into the road. Piled up in front of the cafe bar Le Jean Bart are many emtpy boxes which extend into Rue des Halles into the distance, waiting to be collected and reused. The fresh produce had to be sold by 7 o'clock in the morning or else cleared away and removed by 8 o'clock by the authorities in order to allow the free circulation of traffic in the roads. But in the winter the time was extended by an hour to 9 o'clock. Rue Baltard, Le Carreau des Halles, Quartier des Halles, 1er arrondissement, Right Bank, Paris, France, circa 1960s.