Isle-sur-la-Sorgue: what to expect from Provence's antique capital

Eleven in the morning and the town was already gone. Swallowed by people, cars circling for a parking spot that didn't exist, the sort of crowd you only get when everyone read the same guidebook.

We hadn't. We'd just heard the name enough times to know we had to see it.

L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue holds its antique market every Sunday, and it isn't a secret. It's one of the largest in France, which is precisely the problem and precisely the point. Arrive at eight and there might still be parking near the centre. Arrive later, like we did, and you follow the signs to the fields on the edge of town and walk in.

The town itself is really two things stitched together. There are the antique villages: proper warehouses, open all week, stacked floor to ceiling with everything you could want in one place. Beautiful. Also expensive, in the way dealer prices always are. Row upon row of the same confit pots, all slightly different, none of them cheap. It isn't a place to find a bargain. It's a place to look at a hundred versions of a thing until you know exactly what you're after.

Then, threaded through the streets around it, the market proper. A Provençal food market on the same morning, and alongside it, stalls that aren't dealers at all. Just people, with better prices, if you're willing to look for them. That's where we found her: an antique bowl, bought straight from the woman who'd owned it, not a dealer in sight.

We also came home with soap. Small things, both of them. Which felt, in the end, about right. This isn't the place to buy in bulk to sell on. It's the place you go to remember what proportion looks like, and to bring back one or two things that say you were there.

Mostly Americans, mostly cameras, mostly worth it anyway.

Part two of this is coming: the flea market that follows, smaller, quieter, an entirely different pace.