Inspired by recent reporting from Condé Nast Traveler. This is Wandr's own original take and advice for travellers.
Key facts
- Destination: Paris, France
- Check ahead before planning a Marais morning around the market, as rebuilding timelines for historic Paris sites often stretch into years
- Head to Marché d'Aligre early, ideally before 9am, for the best produce and the least crowded aisles
- Pair a market visit with a nearby museum morning, like the Musée Carnavalet, to make the most of the Marais despite the closure
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A Marais morning, interrupted
I have eaten lunch standing up at Marché des Enfants Rouges more times than I can count, balancing a paper plate of Moroccan tagine on one palm and a plastic cup of Loire Valley white in the other, elbow to elbow with Parisians on their break and tourists who had wandered in off Rue de Bretagne because the awnings looked promising. That market, tucked into the Haut Marais since the early 1600s, was never grand. It was better than grand. It was lived-in, slightly ramshackle, full of good smells and better gossip, and it is precisely the kind of place that reminds you why you came to Paris instead of somewhere with better weather.
News that an overnight fire has destroyed the market lands with a particular kind of sadness, because Enfants Rouges was never a monument you admired from a respectful distance. It was a market you used. You went there hungry and left happy, and in between you probably bought a jar of something you did not need and could not pronounce. For anyone with a Paris trip already booked, the obvious question is: now what?
Field notes · Paris
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Sources
- Condé Nast Traveler (original report that inspired this story)
About Mary Mora
Mary Mora is Wandr's Mediterranean travel expert. She covers destinations around the Mediterranean, from Spain, France and Italy to Croatia, Greece, Türkiye and North Africa.
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