La Villette

The Parc de la Villette is marked by twenty-six bright red, abstract structures known as follies scattered across its fifty-five hectares. This expanse occupies the site of the former Parisian slaughterhouses and wholesale meat market, which operated here for over one hundred years. Inaugurated in eighteen sixty-seven under Napoleon the Third, the industrial complex was once nicknamed the City of Blood, as millions of animals were processed within its gates annually to supply the capital with meat.