Where Parisians Shopped Before the Department Store

In Chinese, Japanese and Korean, the word for department store is written with characters meaning "hundred," "goods" and "shop" - a store selling a hundred kinds of things. The English term works the same way: a store made up of departments, each specializing in a different kind of merchandise. Clothes and shoes, furniture, even cars in some places - there is almost nothing a department store doesn't sell. But before department stores existed, where did Parisians go shopping?

The answer is the arcade, or passage. It isn't a particular district or building, but a covered, cross-shaped walkway lined with small shops. Their windows were filled with curious goods that stopped passers-by in their tracks. Some people bought, and others simply enjoyed a little window-shopping.

What set the arcades apart from ordinary shops on the street were the roof and the gas lamps. Under glass and cover, you could shop without an umbrella, whatever the weather, and the brightly lit storefronts drew people in almost like merchandise themselves. For nineteenth-century Parisians, that was a real breakthrough. The arcades even had bookshops and reading rooms, so people came for more than shopping - they were the hot spots of their day.

The arcades gradually disappeared under Haussmann's remaking of Paris, but a few still survive today. If you have time, stroll through one the way early nineteenth-century Parisians did, browse the windows, and pick up a small souvenir. On a rainy day, you'll appreciate the roof even more.