Grand Braderie 2026

The Braderie (pronounced "broadery") is an event that originated in Lille. The first recorded mention of it was in the 12th century. It began as a day when wealthy people allowed their house servants to sell their discarded clothing. A way of clearing out the closets, I guess, and throwing a few crumbs to the people who actually worked for a living. It sounds like origin of trickle down economics. The sale day also took on the character of a large party. The Beaux Arts museum contains paintings depicting the Braderie in Lille that look like a massive block party. It is now the largest flea market event in Europe and occurs on the first weekend of September. There are over 50 km of stalls, consisting of over 10,000 vendors, ranging from individuals selling househood goods and clothing, as well as professional antique dealers. Five hundred tons of mussels and 50 tons of fries were consumed during the event. We partook in that particular culinary tradition on both Saturday and Sunday. 

Our first Braderie experience was last year, just a month after we arrived. We bought household furniture, rugs, pots and pans, things we needed for our new unfurnished apartment. Our shopping this year had a different focus. We needed things for our large, mostly empty walls. We also wanted to start a collection of French pewter. We were very successful with both goals but it was an exhausting weekend.

Over two million people come to Lille for this event every year. Many of them come to shop, but many more come to party. Regular opening hours for bars and restaurants are suspended. Octoberfest style tables are set up in the streets around all the bars and beer flows virtually all night long. There is outdoor music, DJs, live bands, and roaming "fanfares." The police do not respond to noise complaints. 

This was all very stressful on Bailey last year. She hates crowds and the noise they produce. We planned ahead this year and sent her out to her boarding camp for the weekend. They brought her back Monday afternoon, blissfully unaware of what she had missed. 

Saturday night was the longest and the loudest. We had a good view of it from our apartment and didn't stay out late. We even slept well that night thanks to thick walls and double paned glass on the windows. The city's street crews started clean up late Sunday evening and worked through the night with amazing thoroughness and efficiency. On Monday morning the only trace of the Braderie still remaining we the piles of rented tables ready to be picked up. Bars and restaurants were busy restocking depleted supplies, but I doubt they had a lot of customers anyway. The out-of-towners went home and the locals are all quietly recuperating at home from the bacchanalia. In spite of the excessive alcohol consumption, there were only three arrests, no deaths, no shootings. People came to party and they did.

This area (above and below) near the Citadel was one of the best locations for the professional antique dealers. 

One of our first purchases was this cast iron fire back. 

The fall fair opened just the week before the Braderie. It will be here through September.

Fanfares are bands consisting of 6-12 people, mostly brass. They are not professionals, nor are they connected to any particular music program. They seem to be just amateur music enthusiasts. They are common and popular in Lille and the north of France in particular.

There was also unexpected forms of entertainment, like this woman with her marionette. 

And this guy offering people the opportunity to knock out the fascists.

And this dude "drumming" on various kitchen items.

Another fanfare performing near the city center.

There were collection points around town for empty mussel shells.

Some of the shells are used as a soil additive for gardening and others are pulverized and turned into boards for park benches.

This band performed on the street in front of our house Saturday evening. That's our house in the background. 

This one was playing outside our favorite beer bar on Sunday afternoon.

Note the trombones out the window on the second floor. There were two more on the opposite side of the street.

This is the pewter we managed to collect over the weekend.

Several of these were made in Lille.

Street scene out our bedroom window Saturday afternoon.

This is a reproduction of a tapestry that we saw in at the Cluny museum in Paris.

I'll post more pictures of things we bought when we get them hung.

More adventures in Lille

We've gone over a week now without needing or using the air conditioner. And we've finally had enough rain that things are greening up again. Fields of grass that looked like stubble in a wheat field after harvest are green and growing again. Here are a few pictures from recent events and adventures.

History walk:  We signed up for another history walk, this one given by a recording played through a earphones that directed us as we walked around town. We've been here long enough and taken enough tours that nothing was really "new" to us, but still I learned a few new things along the way so it was worth doing. It was threatening to rain and finally did as we walked home, so we ducked into a new ramen shop that Clay had been wanting to try. It was very good.

Above and below: Pelicans on rooftops. Brasserie Pelican was located here.

The Lille train station, Gare de Flandres, was moved here from Paris, piece by piece. This is the view from the front of the train station, a boulevard built in the Parisian style. You can see the rain clouds moving in. This was just the beginning of the walk, but the rain held off.

St. Maurice, above the church named for him.

These three gilt figures are on top of a building in the Grand Place representing the three royal realms of the region, left to right, Artois, Flandres, and Hainault. 

This is a wedge shaped building that was intended to be the start of another Parisian-style boulevard, but those plans fell apart.

A small sidewalk marker remembering a member of the resistance who was deported and then decapitated by the nazis. Many of these are being placed around the city at the homes of Holocaust victims. 

This sculpture honors Louis Pasteur, who lived in Lille and was the first director of sciences at the local university. This is in a small park that Bailey and I visited daily when we were living in the AirBnB for the first couple months after arrival.

This is the Port de Roubaix, which I've seen and shared before, but on this tour I learned that it was built during the time that the Spanish Hapsburgs ruled Lille and much of Flanders.

Canal floating with heron: I try to get out for a midday walk between Bailey's morning and evening outings to up my daily step count, which has been lagging badly with the summer heat. One day recently I went off to explore a small canal that empties into the Deule. I have seen it on my walks but had never gone up that way. It's rather stagnant water so it was completely covered in green duckweed. Near the point where the small canal meets the larger Deule, I spotted a grey heron standing on flat, raft-like piece of wood that was slowly drifting downstream to the larger canal. I had a good vantage point from a bridge that crossed the small canal so I just watched and waited as this heron played Tom Sawyer and drifted downstream. I wondered what, if anything, would cause the heron to take flight but nothing did for quite a while. Finally, just he was nearing the area where the smaller canal's stream was merging with the larger a large barge approached. He still didn't fly off until the barge's wake began to rock his raft. Then he took flight and headed back down the smaller canal landing on the bridge where I stood watching. Maybe it was one of those "you had to be there" things, but it was kind of fun. 

The board looking like it was part of a packing crate. It wasn't attached to anything and was floating slowly. I'm not sure how long Harry the heron had been onboard before I came along. 

I saw him cock his head and look up at me but he wasn't bothered.

Here you can see Harry's raft nearing the confluence with the Deule canal.

He had a demeanor of absolute serenity.

I was happy to see that the pair of swans (Sam and Sally) were still in the area.

Tables Houblonnées (hoppy tables): It wasn't long after arriving in Lille that I had my first Paix Dieu. It's a triple style of beer made by Brasserie Caulier, not too far from here in Belgium. Triples very quickly became my preferred style of beer and it's a common style around here so there's always at least one triple on tap everywhere you go. Paix Dieu is among the best of them that I've had. Clay follows several local news sources to find out about things happening around town. He saw this event, Tables Houblonées, and signed us up. It was a dinner in the hop fields featuring food from a local Michelen-starred chef with beer pairings from Brassier Caulier. They provided transportation by bus, although most folks drove there on their own. I've never really been much of a foodie, we tend to view food just as something necessary to keep the beer down, but I was really impressed by the quality of this food. And of course, the beer was excellent. We ate, drank, and I had a nap when we got home before taking Bailey out for her evening walk. 

The poles are probably 20-25 feet high, the hop vines grow on wires all the way to the top.

There was a tent near the road where we had a welcome beer, then followed this boardwalk into the fields.

Fortunately it didn't rain while we were there, but there was an elevated and covered platform with tables stretched out in the center. 

The bar.

The north of France and Belgium are beer areas because hops grow well here while grapes grow better in the south of France where it's warmer.

This was not the main kitchen but they prepared the entrées (starters) here.

The view down one of the rows.

The floral decorations were local wildflowers.

This was a very colorful entrée, cheese with multi-colored tomatoes. 

This was a souvenir fan provided at each place setting. On a hotter day this would have been much appreciated and well used.

This particular field is a family owned farm that provides hops to Brasserie Caulier.

And finally: The fall fair is back in town as are all the college students and local residents now that vacation season is over. 

Bailey in the field of greening grass. That is her friend Hannah in the distance.