The staff of the old Samaritaine were the least helpful in Paris and consequently the world. The slogan of the old store was “The whole of Paris comes to La Samaritaine.”. The destruction of the old Samaritaine was romantically, historically and socially a calamity. People no longer wanted to go to a shop in central Paris to buy a concrete mixer or lawn-mower or even a pet piranha fish. All the same, the transformation is cruelly emblematic of what has happened to central Paris in the last two or three decades.

Source: The Local June 24, 2021 07:14 UTC