All the charm of small shops at the beginning of the 20th century: the bistro, the hatmaker, the grocery store, the butcher shop and many other shops with their products and advertisements. An impressive collection of everyday objects so endearing to our memory and yet now disappeared.
The visit begins with the cycle repair workshop and the petrol station with its glass jar pump. You then find yourself facing the real front of the Theatre Bar.
The bistro where Absinthe was served is there. The hat shop, with its custom-made felt hats. Then, the pharmacy, with its cabinets filled with strange products with learned names. Dyeing it with the impressive washing machine and its copper pots.
At the top of the stairs is the grocery store, the ancestor of supermarkets, which offers an amazing choice of products and whose shelves are filled with boxes of Banania, Bouillon Kub and Leroux chicory.
The grain mill, whose furniture in the yellow and blue colours of Les Graines Elite Clause, is full of seeds and fertilizers such as Potasse d'Alsace.
Freddy Coffees, where you can buy the roasted coffee of the day but also other exotic products such as spices imported directly from the Colonies. The hair salon, with its mixed scents of cologne and shine, is waiting for you to come through the door....
Not to mention the smell, which allows a multi-sensory approach with scent diffusers installed in the shops: old leather in the shoemaker's shop, glue on the schoolchildren's desk, cloves in the dentist's office, camphor in the pharmacy, encaustic, coffee...
Museum of Old-fashioned Trade
12 Lesson Street,
17300 Rochefort
Tel: 05 46 46 83 91 50 50
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator
