Samaritaine

This guide to the Samaritaine in Paris starts with Ernest Cognacq, who arrived penniless and sold linens off upturned crates near the Pont-Neuf before renting a tiny back room in 1870 and naming his shop after the old pump that once fed the Louvre. It follows his partnership with saleswoman Marie-Louise Jaÿ, whom he married in 1872, and the store's simple new ideas, like marked prices and no haggling, that Parisians had never seen before. Stand in the central atrium and picture that forty-eight-square-metre back room where it all began.