L'Isle sur la Sorgue: the European antiques capital

Over the years, the antique market has become the international calling card for Isle-sur-la-Sorgue. Incontestably, the International Antiques Fair that takes place twice a year, at Easter and in the month of August, has found itself a place in the sun within the greater, highly prized European antiques market. To such a degree that Isle-sur-la-Sorgue forms today, with London and Paris, one of the cardinal points of the golden triangle. It is, in fact, the pivot around which the shops, art galleries, decorators, caterers, hotels and restaurants are the spearheads of an important economic activity for the town, whose population has gone, in a short time, from 1960 to 2007, from 7000 to 20,000 inhabitants.

To Joseph Légier, the Islois, descendant of a family of antique dealers from father to son, we owe the great idea of importing the concept of a second-hand furniture fair from the Popes’ Palace to Isle-sur-la-Sorgue and to have adapted it to the more modest profile of this characterful town. The follow-up to the story deserves to figure in a small manual for honest people looking for recognition and prosperity. It was indeed at that time, in a beautiful month of August in the year of grace 1966, that he decided with his friend and associate Albert Gassier to set off on the adventure of a small business with, as their only partners, a handful of traveling salespeople. The fourteen exhibitors in that dreamed about year were going to cross one by one the stages and climb the ladder to success, to quickly find themselves in the footlights of the media. Television reports were broadcast, an association was created, the town council gave its support, the first antique “villages”, spurred on by Jean Nicolas, made their appearance and were established for the long term. Then, the International Fair in Isle-sur-la-Sorgue soared and reached its cruising speed with dizzying rapidity. In the 1980s, following a successful bestseller in the United States, it seduced the jet set who fell under the charms of its antiques. In a short time, the professionals settled here and the clientele became international. In short, the economic miracle characteristic of the period called the Glorious Thirty swept through Isle-sur-la-Sorgue.

It was a trend that the antique dealers of Isle-sur-la-Sorgue were able to manage to the utmost, by building on the banks of the Sorgue the very competitive Antiques Villages, well patronized like the legendary Parisian markets of Saint-Ouen, and in which the objects have nothing to envy of London shops. Some figures, going beyond the display of statistics, are eloquent. With half a thousand professionals (exhibitors and shops), a dozen Antique Villages, a Charter of Quality to put the event above any suspicion, the antique fair is as much an Ali Baba’s cavern for antique lovers as a potential goldmine for antique dealers.