Carré Marigny

The Carré Marigny ("Marigny Square"), in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, is the site of an open-air market where postage stamps are bought and sold by hobbyists and serious philatelists.

The Carré Marigny was featured as a location in the Stanley Donen film, Charade (1963), starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant.

The tree-filled square off the Avenue Gabriel was named for Abel-François Poisson, marquis de Marigny, the able brother of Madame de Pompadour who was Director of Buildings for Louis XV. The space was donated to the city of Paris for this specific purpose by a rich stamp-collector after open-air philatelic exchanges had been evicted from the Palais-Royal in 1864 and from the Luxembourg Garden shortly thereafter. Officially, these evictions were provoked by the presence of éléments indésirables (unsavory types) who had attached themselves to the stamp-collecting enthusiasts. More likely, it was a matter of the Second Empire being uneasy about anything that attracted crowds of people whose political intentions were unknown and potentially subversive.

Within ten years after the 1849 appearance of the first postage stamp in France, the new pastime called philately had become a full-blown craze, first among university students, then among the public at large. Today there are more than fifty dealers in the Carré Marigny offering a large selection of stamps and postcards from all over the world, as well as phone cards. The stamp market is held on three days each week: Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 6:30 in the evening.

There are two sections to the stamps market in the Carré Marigny. Behind the Théâtre Marigny, (formerly the Bouffes Parisiens, that Jacques Offenbach conducted in 1855 before leaving for a larger venue), and along the Avenue Gabriel, between the Avenue Matignon and the Avenue de Marigny, are the licensed stamp vendors.

...
Wikipedia