Le Bon Marché
The world's first modern department store, where fixed prices, free browsing, and a love story changed retail forever.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Le Bon Marché in Paris follows Aristide Boucicaut, a fabric salesman who fell for a creamery worker named Marguerite and, over his family's objections, married her and took over a modest Left Bank shop in 1852. You'll hear how he tore up the rules of retail with fixed prices and free browsing, how novelist Émile Zola haunted the place with a notebook, and whose name is signed on the glass roof above the bookshop. Look up before you head inside.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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