What days and hours is the Place des Lices market?

Every Tuesday and Saturday morning, all year round, deep winter included. Stalls start coming down around 12.30pm and the best growers can sell out well before that.

Where do you park for the market?

Parking des Lices is closest, underneath the square itself, but it is usually full by 9am in season. In summer the town runs free shuttles and a road train from the park and ride. The dates shift from year to year, so check with the tourist office. The other options are covered in our practical guide.

Is the market manageable with a pushchair or a wheelchair?

Before 10am, yes: the aisles are wide and the square is flat. After that, much less so, and on a Saturday it is frankly hard work. The southern end, on the pétanque side, stays clear and gives you somewhere to breathe while one of you finishes the shopping.

Is there an antiques fair, and should you come earlier that day?

Yes, a professional antiques fair joins the market on the first Saturday of each month. It is the one day it genuinely pays to turn up very early, before the dealers have done their round.

What happens to the square once the stalls are gone?

It goes back to being a pétanque pitch. The players reclaim the shaded end as soon as the trestles come down, and it is a show in its own right, especially off-season when the square can breathe again.

Photo: Niels Elgaard Larsen · CC BY-SA 3.0

Marché · Chaque mardi et samedi matin · Recurring

The Place des Lices Provencal Market

On Tuesday and Saturday mornings, Place des Lices stops being a backdrop and goes back to what it has always been: the belly of the village. This is where the Tropeziens do their shopping, in February as much as on 15 August.

A square that was never decorative

The name of the square tells its story. In the Middle Ages, "lices" meant the enclosed ground where jousts were held. The space already existed in the ninth and tenth centuries, in a far rougher form, and served as a training ground, a fairground and a parade ground before being laid out as a public square in the nineteenth century, with the plane trees still standing today.

Put another way, Place des Lices has always been where the village gathers to do something together. The market is simply the latest form that habit has taken, and it runs all year. That matters, because it is close to the only thing in this village of which you can say as much.

What is actually on the stalls

More than a hundred traders on a good day. The food half occupies the heart of the square: growers from the haut-Var, goat cheeses, olives and tapenades, charcuterie, fishmongers, cut flowers. That is the part worth the trip, and the part that packs up first.

Around it, the non-food half spreads out: household linen, soaps, pottery, straw hats, clothes, jewellery. The quality swings wildly. There are excellent craftspeople and a great deal of tat made a long way from here. The rule is simple: ask where it comes from. People who make things answer gladly and usually at too much length, which is a good sign.

On the first Saturday of each month a professional antiques fair grafts itself onto the market. Different crowd, different prices.

The Place des Lices in Saint-Tropez, under its plane trees — Place des Lices, Saint-Tropez Photo: Jacek Wieski · CC BY-SA 4.0

Two days, two markets, and a season that changes everything

On paper, Tuesday and Saturday are the same event twice. In practice they are two moods.

Tuesday is the market of the people who live here. Fewer clothes stalls, more vegetables, conversations that run long, and a genuine chance of moving down the aisles until midday. It is the day you understand that the market is a public service first.

Saturday is bigger, more commercial, far denser. Weekend visitors pile in, the non-food half expands, and from 10am the square becomes hard to cross. If you have the choice, take Tuesday. If Saturday is all you have, be there at 8am.

Off-season, finally, let us be blunt: the best market on Place des Lices is not the August one. In November, February and March the square returns to its normal proportions. Growers have time, prices become reasonable again, and seasonal produce reappears that vanishes from the stalls in summer because holidaymakers care less about it.

What to buy, and from whom

A market is judged not by its size but by the share of people selling what they grow or make. On Place des Lices that share is high in the middle and low at the edges. Learning to tell them apart takes one visit.

Fruit and vegetables. The haut-Var supplies most of it. In spring, asparagus and small purple artichokes; in summer, tomatoes, courgettes with their flower, melons; in autumn, figs and grapes. A stall offering the same things all year round is not a grower.

Goat cheeses. The steadiest local speciality, from fresh to very dry on the same board. They will let you taste if you ask.

Olives and tapenades. Sold by weight, taste before buying, and keep them cool once home.

Fish. Few stalls, but the gulf still lands its own catch and it still goes through the local auction. It is the part that closes earliest, and on a hot morning it can be gone by eleven.

What to skip: wicker baskets, scented soaps packaged identically from one end of Provence to the other, and printed tablecloths. Imported goods, sold at handmade prices.

Insider advice

Come before 10am. This is not affectation. Between 8 and 10 you cross paths with locals, growers have time to talk, and you can move. From 10.30 the square becomes a corridor.
Bring cash. Many small producers have no card terminal, or have one and would rather you did not know.
Do not hunt for bargains. This is not a cheap market and never has been. What you come for is quality and a good morning.
Follow it with a coffee on the square. The Café des Arts has watched this square long enough to have seen everyone pass.
The market shapes the start of a day, it does not fill one. A morning that begins at 8am leaves the whole afternoon free and dodges the village's two peaks, the midday one on the harbour and the late afternoon one on the beaches. The coastal path leaves from the Graniers beach, fifteen minutes on foot.
Carry water in summer. The plane trees shade the square, which changes everything, but there is no drinking fountain.
Carry on by foot. The harbour and old town are five minutes away, the Citadelle and its maritime history museum a little higher, and the Musée de l'Annonciade takes an hour. And La Tarte Tropézienne is the one Saint-Tropez souvenir you can eat.

Arriving on a market morning

On a Tuesday or Saturday morning, Place des Lices and its car park fill before the rest of the village. The arithmetic is quick: arrive at 8am and you park, arrive at 10am and you circle.

The trick the people who live around the gulf use is the boat. Shuttles cross from Sainte-Maxime in fifteen minutes, one to four sailings an hour, seven days a week and ten months a year, and one of them has been fully electric since 2025. You park on the far side, cross, and step off five minutes' walk from the square, with no parking bill and no queue on the departmental road.

Roads, stations, car parks and seasonal shuttles are all set out in our practical guide.

Questions we get asked

What days and hours is the Place des Lices market?: Every Tuesday and Saturday morning, all year round, deep winter included. Stalls start coming down around 12.30pm and the best growers can sell out well before that.
Where do you park for the market?: Parking des Lices is closest, underneath the square itself, but it is usually full by 9am in season. In summer the town runs free shuttles and a road train from the park and ride. The dates shift from year to year, so check with the tourist office. The other options are covered in our practical guide.
Is the market manageable with a pushchair or a wheelchair?: Before 10am, yes: the aisles are wide and the square is flat. After that, much less so, and on a Saturday it is frankly hard work. The southern end, on the pétanque side, stays clear and gives you somewhere to breathe while one of you finishes the shopping.
Is there an antiques fair, and should you come earlier that day?: Yes, a professional antiques fair joins the market on the first Saturday of each month. It is the one day it genuinely pays to turn up very early, before the dealers have done their round.
What happens to the square once the stalls are gone?: It goes back to being a pétanque pitch. The players reclaim the shaded end as soon as the trestles come down, and it is a show in its own right, especially off-season when the square can breathe again.

Source: Saint-Tropez Tourisme

#market#recurring#provencal#place des lices

Published on September 2, 2026Updated on September 3, 2026

See you there. I am the one in the panama hat.

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