St-Ouen Market
From Paris Hotels Reviews
St-Ouen Market
The St-Ouen market, sometimes called the Clignancourt market, is located just outside the northern edge of the 18th arrondissement, in the surburb of St-Ouen.
It's officially open on Saturday, Sunday and Monday from 9am to 6.30pm although this can vary depending on the weather, and many stands are closed on Monday. Its popular name of les puces de St.-Ouen, or the “St-Ouen flea market”, dates form the days when seconhand mattresses, clothes and other infested junk was sold here in a free-for-all zone outside the city walls, Nowadays, however, it's predominantly a proper – and very expensive – antiques market, selling mainly furniture, but also old zinc café counters, telephones, traffic lights, posters, jukeboxes and so on.
The closest métro stop is Porte-de-Clignacourt (line4), from where it's a five-minute walk up the busy avenue de la Porte-de-Clignancourt. For a slower but quieter approach, you can go to the Porter de St-Ouen stop (line13) and walk north along the avenue de la Porter de St-Ouen, turning right after the péripherique flyover, and continuing along rue du Dr Babinski for about then minutues until it meets rue Jean-Henri-Fabre.
Coming from either direction, you have to pass through the market's genuinely flea-bitten fringe before you get the real thing. Shaded by the flyover, rue Jean-Henri-Fabre is the heart of this light-fingered area, lined with stalls flogging cheap jeans and leather jackets, rip-off DVD, sunglasses, household cleaning products with inscrutable foreign labels, and African souvenirs. Watch your wallet, and don't fall for the gangs pulling the three-card monte or cup-and-hidden-ball scams.
Should hunger overtake you, there are plenty of cafés on rue Paul Bert and rue des Rosiers, or you could brave the rather touristy buvette buried at the end of Marché Vernaison's Allée 10, Chez Louisette. The great gypsy jazz guitarist, Django Reinhardt, sometimes played here, but these days singers belt out Parisian chansons with keyboard backing every Saturday afternoon. For a proper restaurant meal, book a table in advance at Le Soleil, 109 ave Michelet ( 01.40.10.08.08; Mon-Wed & Sun noon-2pm, Thurs-Sat noon-2.30pm & 7.30-10.30pm), where you'll pay around €30-45 a head for unfussy but excellent French cuisine.
