A fire in the early hours of Monday 12 October has destroyed the Marché des Enfants Rouges in the Marais, the oldest covered food market in Paris and a fixture of the city's food scene since 1615. Around 150 firefighters and 50 emergency vehicles battled the blaze through the night. The Paris fire brigade's Lieutenant-Colonel Pierre de Bouvier described the covered hall as completely destroyed, though crews stopped the flames spreading to the residential buildings packed around it. No serious injuries were reported, and the cause is under investigation.

The damage is extensive: roughly 1,000 square metres of stalls were lost. The nearby Jardin Madeleine de Scudéry and Square du Temple have been closed temporarily while authorities assess the site. Ariel Weil, mayor of Paris Centre, summed up the mood at the scene — deep sadness, tempered by relief that something far worse was avoided given how tightly the market sits among homes.

The market's story stretches back four centuries. Founded in 1615 under Louis XIII, it takes its name — "children in red" — from a long-vanished orphanage nearby whose pupils wore red uniforms. It was listed as a historic monument in 1982, and it nearly disappeared once before: in the 1990s, plans to demolish the crumbling site and build an underground car park were fought off by locals and traders, leading to renovations and a reopening in 2000. Whether it can be rebuilt this time is unclear.

Part of what made the place special was its mix of independent vendors. There was Chez Alain Miam Miam, whose giant sandwiches became a TikTok sensation and drew international crowds to what had long been a locals' market. There was Le Traiteur Marocain, serving tajines; Les Enfants du Marché for a glass of wine with friends; Lulu Crêperie for a pre-Marais-walk crêpe; and a Japanese stall run by chef Taeko Inai, who arrived in the early 2000s, alongside Moroccan and Italian traders. Losing the market isn't just losing a building — it's displacing dozens of small businesses, many of them family-run.

For travellers, the timing matters if you're heading to Paris soon. The market is off the menu for now, and the surrounding green spaces are shut. It's worth waiting for official updates before assuming anything about reopening dates or whether the traders will find temporary homes nearby. Anyone visiting the Marais — still one of the best eating neighbourhoods in the city — will find plenty of alternatives, from the food shops on Rue de Bretagne to the streets around the Haut Marais, but the Enfants Rouges had a particular, unpolished charm that's hard to replace: shop, eat and drink under one roof in a hall that had been doing exactly that since the reign of Louis XIII.

If there's a glimmer of hope, it's the market's own history. Parisians have saved it before, and the outpouring of feeling since the fire suggests they'll fight for it again.

Reported by Condé Nast Traveller UK.