City Guide – A Special Focus on Paris Flea Markets
The City of Lights has always been connected to luxury, lifestyle and modern living. Paris was and still is, the biggest influencer in Europe when it comes to fashion and design. Events such as Maison et Objet and Paris Fashion Week take place each year inviting personalities from all over the world to get in touch with the finest designers and visionaries.
One that visits, immediately feels its innovative environment, warm culture and passionate style. It becomes impossible to not be inspired by its architecture, its art and its people. A must-visit destination for design and art lovers…It is exactly what we see in the movies, beatiful landscapes, amazing movement in the streets and a vast range of boutiques and shops.
“You can’t escape the past in Paris, and yet what’s so wonderful about it is that the past and present intermingle so intangibly that it doesn’t seem to burden.”
Allen Ginsberg
The history of the flea market dates back over two centuries, when rag and bone men scoured through the garbage at night to find valuable junk to sell on. They were called ‘crocheteurs’ or pickers. The rag and bone men gathered outside the walls of Paris at the Porte de Clignancourt and set up temporary stalls where they hawked their wares. Eventually, they formed groups of stalls to attract more customers.
Flea Markets make the best places to experience the beauty of design and art. They are real crossroads of the field, bringing together antique dealers, designers, artisans and artists to show off their amazing collections. These markets are incredibly colorful and diverse, you can find all kinds of objets and furnishings from different styles and cultures in a fun, friendly environment where you’re able to meet all kinds of personalities.
The most famous Flea Market is the one at Porte de Clignancourt, officially called Les Puces de Saint-Ouen, but known to everyone as Les Puces (The Fleas). It covers seven hectares and is the largest antique market in the world, receiving between 120,000 to 180,000 visitors each weekend.
Tip: Go during the morning, after lunch it becomes very crowded!
Hours
Every Saturday from 9h – 18h
Every Sunday from 10h to 18h
Every Monday from de 11h to 5h
Marché Biron
The Marché Biron is a real route of the periods in art history. Thanks to its varied stalls, it presents the different variations of these periods: art items, Parisian or provincial furniture of the 18th century, furniture and ostentations of the 19th century, paintings, ceramics, Far-East, scientific items, new art and Art deco, design, photography…
It is the only one to provide such a diversity of specialized goods and it wishes to be the reference market of the Puces. Of course, through its reputation it makes progress and each antique dealer, in its own stall, realizes that he participates in the creation of history and accepts this new challenge with dynamism and responsibility.
Opening hours
The market is open on:
• Saturdays and Sundays from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm
• Mondays from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm
See also: Top 3 Design Shops in Paris
Marché Dauphine
Inspired by the prestigious Pavillon Baltard, the architecture of Dauphine hosts, on 6 000 m² around, 180 merchants selling antiques and second-hand items. Ten years after its creation, Dauphine can be proud to be one of the reference flea markets. The experts are looking for high quality goods and original pieces: from the Haute-Epoque dresser to rare texts of the Tora, not forgetting the collections of corsets and cheeky underwear or the thousands of rare books, the golden wood of the 18th century, the 30s and the 40s, the vintage or the revisited industrial art by inspired decorators. Dauphine signs its image by the diversity and the abundance of authentic pieces.
Opening hours
The market is open on:
• Saturdays and Sundays from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm
• Mondays from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm
Marché Malassis
Antique dealers at Marché Malassis have the talent to find furniture or even unusual items, to restore them and to put them in an atmosphere they create according to the inspiration of the moment. They mix with brio waxed furniture or furniture with restored patina, funny items or objects not used as originally intended and transformed them as erotic, baroque or neoclassic decorations sometimes a bit contemporaries.
Some antique dealers especially love a period and its style linked to a certain type of lifestyle. We can particularly list the oriental stalls, tableware, bar furniture, maritime items, a writer’s library or an artist’s studio, the collectors (watchs, toys, postcards etc.), beaded trimmings and jewels… It’s a real, unexpected and fun Prévert-style inventory to discover or rediscover.
Opening hours
The market is open on:
• Saturdays and Sundays from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm
• Mondays from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm
See also: Top 3 Most Instagrammed London Museums
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