The most famous flea market in Paris is the one at Porte de Clignancourt, officially called Les Puces de Saint-Ouen, but known to everyone as Les Puces (The Fleas).
Flea Market Hours:
Every Saturday from 9h - 18h
Every Sunday from 10h to 18h
Every Monday from de 11h to 5h (please note that many stalls close around lunch time)
If you get there early, plan on having a leisurely Café Crème and watching the antiques world start up for the day. If you're a serious shopper, watch out as it becomes very crowded after lunch!!
Important Note: Be careful to hide wallets and purses; as in any city, big crowds are a great place for pickpockets to work - and the Flea Market is no exception. When guests reserve our apartments in Paris we repeatedly advise them to hide their wallets in a fanny pack and to leave their passports in our apartment safes, but every few months we get a phone call from them, telling us they have lost their passports and credit cards. Do be careful.
Size of The Flea Market: The Puces covers 7 hectares and is the largest antiques market in the world, receiving between 120,000 to 180,000 visitors each weekend.
Flea Market Hours:
Every Saturday from 9h - 18h
Every Sunday from 10h to 18h
Every Monday from de 11h to 5h (please note that many stalls close around lunch time)
If you get there early, plan on having a leisurely Café Crème and watching the antiques world start up for the day. If you're a serious shopper, watch out as it becomes very crowded after lunch!!
Important Note: Be careful to hide wallets and purses; as in any city, big crowds are a great place for pickpockets to work - and the Flea Market is no exception. When guests reserve our apartments in Paris we repeatedly advise them to hide their wallets in a fanny pack and to leave their passports in our apartment safes, but every few months we get a phone call from them, telling us they have lost their passports and credit cards. Do be careful.
Size of The Flea Market: The Puces covers 7 hectares and is the largest antiques market in the world, receiving between 120,000 to 180,000 visitors each weekend.
How to Get to the Flea Market
Take the métro to Porte de Clignancourt on Line 4 and follow the crowds towards the large concrete overpass. If you are looking for antiques, don't waste too much time looking through the clothing, African objects and household goods on streets along the way. The market and neighborhood is very colorful and you will love the diversity of personalities, stall keepers and products for sale! The 18th arrondissement, where the Puces are located, is in a poorer part of Paris and the market gets very crowded. As mentioned above, you want to watch your wallets and you can safely stroll around here during the day.
Rue des Rosiers is the main street which you walk down in order to go into the separate markets. The individual markets tend to run into each other, and even after shopping there for 20 years, I am still not sure where some stop and others begin.
Flea Market Tips
The history of the flea market dates back over two centuries, when rag and bone men scoured through the garbage of Paris at night to find valuable junk to sell on. They were called 'crocheteurs' or pickers. The romantic term was 'pêcheurs de lune' or fishermen for the moon. Many set up their temporary stalls within the Paris walls, in sleazy neighborhoods but because these neighborhoods were full of pickpockets and thieves, they were chased out of the city walls to Clignancourt, Montreuil, Vanves, etc. The largest of these flea markets is the one at Clignancourt but the other two continue to this day.
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. The more enterprising traders began to 'trade up' in terms of goods and eventually it became popular for Parisian collectors and antique dealers to shop there for bargains.
In 1885, authorities in the town of Saint Ouen made a significant move to pave the streets and clean up the area, marking the official starting year of Les Puces. Several areas were designated as official market areas and a fee had to be paid to set up a stall there.
The markets grew until Monsieur Romain Vernaison transformed the acres he owned into a series of covered huts; voilà, Marché Vernaison was born.
Then an Albanian named Malik (rumored to be an Albanian Prince) bought a restaurant on rue Jules Valles and transformed the building into 100 stalls, forming the Malik market.
The Marché du Biron was formed in 1925, with two long rows of stalls and is known as one of the more expensive markets.
Take the métro to Porte de Clignancourt on Line 4 and follow the crowds towards the large concrete overpass. If you are looking for antiques, don't waste too much time looking through the clothing, African objects and household goods on streets along the way. The market and neighborhood is very colorful and you will love the diversity of personalities, stall keepers and products for sale! The 18th arrondissement, where the Puces are located, is in a poorer part of Paris and the market gets very crowded. As mentioned above, you want to watch your wallets and you can safely stroll around here during the day.
Rue des Rosiers is the main street which you walk down in order to go into the separate markets. The individual markets tend to run into each other, and even after shopping there for 20 years, I am still not sure where some stop and others begin.
Flea Market Tips
- Choose a central meeting point and time after you arrive there so that members of your group can wander off in different directions depending on their interests. Then you can join each other and share your discoveries and purchases.
- Go to the Flea Market in the morning as it becomes very crowded in the afternoon.
- Hide your wallets under your shirt or sweaters around your neck. You don't need a lot of cash anyway, as most dealers accept credit cards.
- Don't bring your passports to the Flea Market or miscellaneous credit cards that you won't use: we have never needed our passports to buy there because antiques do not have VAT for the detaxe refund. We do charge antiques on our credit cards, so bring the essential ones.
- Negotiating: If you love to shop for antiques then you don't need my advice, but remember that everything is negotiable.
- It helps to have someone like my husband around, who is great at saying in a loud voice that we don't need this mirror at all, it's too expensive, etc. If the dealers think they might lose the sale, it speeds up the negotiation.
- I'm giving away all my secrets, but I sometimes pull out my calculator, punch a few buttons, look up and say: ‘It doesn't work at €900; can you do it for €750? They realize I am a dealer and must have the lowest possible price.
- You don't have to complete the sale on the spot; get a mobile phone number and call the dealer the next day to negotiate. If they haven't had a big weekend (and with the Euro at new highs against the dollar, business is very slow) they are more willing to give a good discount.
- Contact a shipper, such as Hedley's Humpers beforehand and they can give you tickets to mark antiques and pick them up the next day for shipment home. This also allows you to negotiate the next day via the dealer's mobile number; you simply call Hedley's afterwards and arrange for them to pick up the item.
The history of the flea market dates back over two centuries, when rag and bone men scoured through the garbage of Paris at night to find valuable junk to sell on. They were called 'crocheteurs' or pickers. The romantic term was 'pêcheurs de lune' or fishermen for the moon. Many set up their temporary stalls within the Paris walls, in sleazy neighborhoods but because these neighborhoods were full of pickpockets and thieves, they were chased out of the city walls to Clignancourt, Montreuil, Vanves, etc. The largest of these flea markets is the one at Clignancourt but the other two continue to this day.
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. The more enterprising traders began to 'trade up' in terms of goods and eventually it became popular for Parisian collectors and antique dealers to shop there for bargains.
In 1885, authorities in the town of Saint Ouen made a significant move to pave the streets and clean up the area, marking the official starting year of Les Puces. Several areas were designated as official market areas and a fee had to be paid to set up a stall there.
The markets grew until Monsieur Romain Vernaison transformed the acres he owned into a series of covered huts; voilà, Marché Vernaison was born.
Then an Albanian named Malik (rumored to be an Albanian Prince) bought a restaurant on rue Jules Valles and transformed the building into 100 stalls, forming the Malik market.
The Marché du Biron was formed in 1925, with two long rows of stalls and is known as one of the more expensive markets.
