Marché des Enfants Rouges

Market · Le Marais (3rd)Paris,France

The oldest covered food market in Paris, opened in 1615 in the Marais, its stalls now mostly cooking for a lunchtime scrum.

Marché des Enfants Rouges is a cramped grid of stalls under an iron-and-glass roof, entered through a low gateway off Rue de Bretagne in the Marais. Most of the counters cook: Moroccan couscous steaming in wide pots, Japanese bento, Italian plates, Lebanese mezze, West African stews. A few greengrocers and a florist hold on among them. At lunchtime it fills with the clatter of forks and people balancing plates at shared tables and upturned crates. It is small, loud and slightly chaotic. Louis XIII had a petit marché du Marais opened on this plot in 1615, which makes it the oldest covered food market in Paris. Its name came from a children's home that Marguerite de Navarre founded nearby in 1536, whose orphans were dressed in red cloth as a sign of Christian charity. Parisians called them the enfants rouges, and by the end of the eighteenth century the market carried their name too. Come early or late if you want a seat, because the middle of the day is a scrum.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Closed all day Monday — the market trades Tuesday to Sunday, and Sunday is the short day, shutting in the late afternoon while the rest of the week runs into the evening.
Couscous and tagines are what people queue for here — the Moroccan counters have pulled regulars for years and hold the busiest queue in the whole grid.
Share a table without asking twice — the communal crates and benches are first-come and elbow-to-elbow; sitting down beside strangers with your plate is simply how it works here.
The way in is easy to walk past — the market has no shopfront on rue de Bretagne, only a carved arch at number 39 with the hall set back behind it.

Things to do

1
Do a full lap before you choose
Resist the first counter you pass. Walk the whole grid once and look at two things: which stalls have a queue, and which have anywhere left to sit. Then double back and order.
2
Find the market beneath the food court
Step out of the cooking aisles to the quieter edges and look up. The market has belonged to the city since 1912, and the iron-and-glass roof above you was brought back out in the five-year restoration that reopened the place in 2000. Everything at eye level arrived after that.