I don’t like going to the Louvre. There, I said it. Let’s leave all those people to queue up for hours while we disappear to find a hidden Paris archive just a few streets away. We’re on the hunt for La Galcante, a clever little French wordplay on “galerie” and “brocante”. Tucked away in the shadows of the former royal palace, few Parisians even know it’s there…
On the far end of Rue Saint-Honoré, where the designer shops turn into local brasseries and superettes, take a turn onto the road of the ‘dry tree’, rue de l’Abre Sec, marked by the Italian fountain of Ludovicus XVI. Look for the big blue door at number 52 where a trolley of old books will lure the wandering eye. Dip into the passageway and begin your descent into the rabbit hole…
At the end of the tunnel sits this peaceful cobblestone courtyard. And on the other side of the soft grey painted window frames of La Galcante, awaits a vault of treasures bursting at the seams…
Give a good firm push to the rickety old doors and let the aromas of ageing print curl around you. It’s the scent of more than 7 million copies of various newspapers, magazines and affairs of the press dating as far back as the old French Regime of the 15th century.
The faint sound of classical jazz is coming from a radio in a back room where a woman’s voice calls out, “Entrez, entrez! J’arrive.” That’s Juliette. She won’t be out for a while and prefers to leave you to it until you need something. Begin your side-stepping dance through narrow aisles of paper piled high, skimming your fingers over the tops of rare and out-of-print magazines.
The Galcante was founded by Christian Bailly, the chairman of the “Musée de la Presse”. When it first opened in 1975, it began as a small shop that just sold copies of what was in the museum’s collections, and later progressed into the first French society selling old newspapers and documents.
But La Galcante isn’t just a place to find yesterday’s news. There’s all kinds of good stuff to dig through, like these beautiful vintage maps which outline countries that no longer exist…
It’s a maze of nooks and crannies to duck and dive into, adorned with eye-catching collectible trinkets at every turn.
And then of course, there’s the world of pre-internet journalism. You can probably find every copy of Le Monde ever printed, but they also have a vast collection of international print…
Including an impressive stash of The New Yorker magazine, dating back to the early 1960s, all in very good condition.
That gentleman on the right is the only other customer that’s entered the boutique while I’ve been mesmerisingly foraging through stacks of magazines and boxes of old press photographs. He came in, rather awe-struck, proclaiming that he’d been visiting his closest friend in the area for decades and never knew this little gem existed. He seems intent on finding something specific in the old newspapers. I wonder what it is…
Juliette has finally come out of her office to help me locate an issue of The New Yorker magazine from 1977, the year my parents got married in New York (it’s their anniversary today).
With a cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth, rambling about how busy she’s been all day, Juliette has me follow her into a dusty back room of La Galcante. She climbs up a ladder and disappears behind the boxes on the mezzanine, assuring me I should never come up here because the floor is about to cave in.
Juliette smokes and swears and complains a lot, but she knows every last inch of this archive back to front.
“Ah! Voilà,” she sings, handing down to me the exact copy I asked her for.
When we emerge from the dusty belly of Juliette’s archive, dusk is starting to rear its pretty little head.
As the door of La Galcante rattles closed behind me; clutching my twenty-five year-old souvenir in a brown paper bag, poking my head up the winding staircases of the silent courtyard; I give a thought to all those crowds of people who spent most of their afternoon queuing at the Louvre just a few streets over. (Our little secret).
La Galcante is at 52, rue de l’Arbre Sec, 75001, open Monday-Saturday, 10h to 19h30.
UPDATE:
It’s with a heavy heart that I share the news that La Galcante, our secret Paris archive, will be closing on 31st March 💔 It’s where I hosted the launch of my first book, Don’t Be a Tourist in Paris in 2017…
The landlord wants to renovate the building which means the shop has to leave, and its collection will now be existing from a warehouse in Normandie. I implore you to pay them a visit before it’s gone. But if not, please use the comments to share your own similar local treasures that might need a little help
