# LE BON MARCHÉ

24 RUE DE SÈVRES, PARIS, FRANCE

This beautiful building was the world’s first ever modern department store so of course, we had to include it on our list.

The original, much smaller, Le Bon Marché opened its doors in 1832, but it wasn’t until Aristide Boucicaut and his wife Marguerite came along to revamp the store twenty years later, that it became known for its innovative design. When they opened up a new, much bigger, store on 24 rue de Sèvres on the Left Bank, they wanted to create an entirely new kind of store and they succeeded.

Designed by architect, Louis- Charles Boileau and French engineer, Gustave Eiffel, the building was inspired by the city’s River Gauche.  Le Bon Marché was known for its innovative marketing ideas and was the first store to offer husbands a ‘reading room’ while their wives shopped to their heart's content.

The department store has undergone some sprucing over the years, with most recent renovations including its shoe department and first-floor beauty department.

Designed by in-house architects the beauty department was remodeled to resemble a ‘beauty grocery store.’ Products are displayed in exposed brick archways and can be plucked from the shelf and added to a customer’s basket as easy as picking up a bushel of apples at Le Supermarché.