Rue Paul Bert

We’ll walk past this little bistro to reach rue Paul Bert, the next street on your left. A burrstone building is on the corner—you can’t miss it! Ranging in colour from ochre to chestnut, burrstone is the spongy stone widely used as a building material, especially in the region around Paris. It was common because of the numerous quarries in the area; the stone was originally used to make millstones.

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Once you’re on the rue Paul Bert, go forward a bit and you’ll notice two detached houses on the right-hand pavement. Covered in lush vegetation, these houses are quite a curiosity as they also house market stands…

Continue along the rue Paul Bert. You’ll walk past one of the entrances of the marché Paul Bert which we’ll enter a little later. Keep going while you listen to the following commentary; stop at the next crossing, which intersects the rue Jules Vallés—also the name of a market.

Every weekend, mountains of goods cover the pavement of the rue Paul Bert. The traders who do business here are the true descendants of the first rag-pickers who set up their market here in the 19th century. However, the salvaging business goes much farther back than that, as you may have suspected. In Paris there were markets for old linen, scrap iron and cast-offs, which took place in the cattle exchange, and still more on the banks of the Seine or in the Diocese gardens. But over time, the flea market dealers, nicknamed “pêcheurs de lune” (literally meaning moonlight fishermen), who trawled for loot at night in the vast Parisian dustbins, were forced to conform to a whole set of regulations. Gradually, their right to sell the yield of their digs within the confines of the city was revoked. And so, round about 1835, pushed out by local councils anxious to sanitize the capital, the second-hand dealers and rag-and-bone men who wanted to keep going found themselves relegated to the area around the fortifications. Other flea markets date from this same period. Of note are the Puces de Montreuil, east of Paris, and the Vanves market, to the south. Let’s continue our walk to reach the intersection of the rue Jules Vallés and the rue Paul Bert.

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Are you in the right place? Just to make sure, opposite you at the end of the rue Paul Bert and on your left, at the end of the rue Jules Vallés, you should be able to see the ring-road. OK... Now, keep looking left at precisely this part of rue Jules Vallés. There are a number of signs indicating nightspots and places of entertainment. Indeed, this area has a large concentration of cafés and bistros, making this the liveliest part of the Puces, both during the day and at night. The “One Way” bar, at number 50 on the rue Jules Vallés, is a major venue for the Paris blues and rock scene. The neighbouring café, “A Picolo,” is probably the oldest bar in the Puces. The story goes that an Italian first set up a booth here to sell the wine he produced from vines on the banks of the Seine. Remember this wine, called the Picolo? A long time ago, the booth was bought by an Albanian named Malik, who turned it into a bistro for the area’s bohemian gypsies and the rag-and-bone men from the flea market. For these bric-a-brac traders or second-hand fabric dealers, Malik also created a market in his own name. These days, the bar has evolved and diversified in terms of the events it stages: during the week, it hosts theatre workshops, rehearsals and the resident troupe, the Cie du Picolo. On the weekend it’s a brasserie where concerts are held…

If you follow the outline of the buildings on the left-hand side, you’ll see where the Malik market is located. It has become a haven for the latest trends in sportswear and fashion and also draws artists and designers on the look-out for new sources of inspiration.

Now let’s turn around towards the other part of rue Jules Vallés, where you can see a large wall painted yellow with the figure of a “porter” on it. This wall marks the entrance of the Jules Vallés market. The man represented on the wall was one of a large number of porters working in the flea markets. Some of them remain even today and the market still provides a rich source of employment of all kinds. There are more than 10 000 people whose livelihoods depend directly or indirectly on trade generated by the Puces. Cafés, restaurants, deliverymen, hardware salesmen, jobs linked to tourism, as well as numerous types of artisan restorers specia