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LA BRADERIE, Lille
When: the first weekend of September; some stalls stay open through the night.

Supposedly the biggest fleamarket in Europe, and the second biggest event on the continent after Oktoberfest, La Braderie sees 2 million bargain-hunters and thousands of bargain-and-otherwise purveyors converging once a year upon the staid but pretty northern French city of Lille for a two-day orgy of secondhand exchange. The gathering, which has been held since the middle ages, when the nobility handed down their used finery to their vassals for sale over this weekend (something similar may be going on today, although the original owners may not know about it) makes an easy short break from the UK, Lille being only an hour-and-a half away from London by Eurostar. A world music line-up of street players keep the surging crowds entertained and pacified as they wend their way along the countless stalls. Moules et frites, the traditional Braderie repast, is available from every bar and brasserie, which compete with each other to build the biggest shell midden on the pavement outside by Sunday evening.

Best buys: Unrestored vintage French furniture, from the stalls around the Saint Sauveur district; secondhand and antiquarian books, near the citadelle; and vintage clothes, in the centre of old Lille. Other goods are scattered throughout the market: someone else’s old toys, enamelware, lamps, weaponry, glass items, lace and fixtures and fittings may be among your most serendipitous finds. The back street stalls represent the richest hunting grounds.

Where to stay: Hotel Brueghel (+33 320 060 669, www.hotel-brueghel.com), with antique-furnished double rooms from euros55 a night and meticulous service, is a good value two-star in the old town and a few minutes’ walk from the Eurostar station. At any hotel, book at least a month in advance for the Braderie weekend.

PORTE DE CLIGNANCOURT and PORTE DE VANVES, Paris
When: Clignancourt - weekends and Mondays, 7.30am-7pm; Vanves - weekends, 7.30am-1pm, times varying with the weather.

“Fleamarket” is thought to be French in origin (marché aux puces), and two of the best in Paris, both of which could be taken in in a weekend, neatly exemplify the early and late stages of fleamarket evolution. Porte de Clignancourt (take the metro to the eponymous station and follow the crowds) has become dominated by pricey retro furniture and antiques, with the apparently inevitable French corollary of bouffant bourgeois women with yappy dogs at their ankles, and gay Americans. Nonetheless, three of the great sheds that make up this permanent market - Marché Varnaison, Marché Jules Vallès and Marché Lécuyer-Vallès - betray its curbside origins and would amply satisfy fleamarket aficionados.

Porte de Vanves - like Clignancourt, originally located by one of the gates set into the medieval city wall, now marked by a metro stop - retains its primitive commercial form. Stallholders, many of whom themselves look decidedly secondhand, simply drive their vans up to the kerbside of the two long streets making up the market early on Saturday morning and depart, hopefully with a lighter load, on Sunday afternoon.

Best buys: At Clignancourt, keep an eye out for gracefully aged glassware (this is where a million 50s soda siphons come to be reborn), china, dated advertising posters and, if you can afford it, hip 20th century furniture. Vanves, if you arrive early enough and look long enough, is more likely to throw up bargain basement treasures. Forlorn puppets, tarnished military medals, bird-free birdcages, antique jewellery looking for a neck, top hats and tatty teddy bears are among the objets that will spark an acquisitive glow in the buyer’s breast according to inclination.

Where to stay: Hôtel Istria (+33 143 209 182, hotel.istria@wanadoo.fr), a healthy walk from Porte de Vanves, has tastefully decorated doubles from euro75 and impeccable artistic credentials thrown in: Louis Aragon, Man Ray, Mayakovsky and Eric Satie all stayed in this Montparnasse establishment.

TONGEREN ANTIQUE AND FLEAMARKET, Tongeren, Belgium
When: Sundays, 6am-noon.

The comparative advantages - to deploy some market economics - of this big Belgian brocante meet lie in its location and its range. Tongeren may be only an hour’s drive south from Brussels but the town is not a tourist magnet like Paris or Rome, and so the competition and the prices are reduced. The market (which begins 500 metres to the east of the central square, spread along Leopoldwal and Middeleeuwsewallen) also handsomely represents the spectrum of fleamarket finds: the 350 dealers offering everything from just junk, through interesting junk, to fine antiques (but at interesting prices).

Tongeren is the oldest established town in the country and has more attractions than just the market, making an overnight stay an easy proposition. There is a fine Gallo-Roman museum, its artefacts organised by theme to represent everyday life in Roman Atuatuca Tungrorum (hero: the Asterixian rebel Ambiorix) and you can watch ongoing excavations in the 13th-century basilica. Sadly, anything available at the fleamarket from either of these historical periods is probably not.

Best buys: Trunks and chests (are the Belgians running out of excess?) and stained glass are among covetable Tongeren commodities. Also look for art deco objects, crystalware, oil lamps, clocks, exotic statuary and ex-attic photographs and paintings.

Where to stay: The family-run four-star Ambiotel (+32 12 26 29 50), overlooking the market, has 22 doubles from euro100.

PORTA PORTESE, Rome
When: Sundays; stallholders’ hours vary but a morning visit will reap rewards.

Cinephiles will remember the Porta Portese fleamarket, in the Trastevere quarter, from the scene in the 1948 Vittorio de Sica classic The Bicycle Thief in which a father trawls the stalls with his son in search of the woebegone little boy’s stolen bicycle. You will need to be vigilant to ensure your possessions do not travel in the opposite direction, as Rome’s smoothest mani di velluto (“velvet hands”: pickpockets) patrol the market at peaktimes. The profusion of stands offering cheap imported clothing have, in recent years, swelled what was already an enormous market, but the rumoured good news is that the Rome authorities intend to whittle Porta Portese back to 500 stalls selling old furniture, antiques, used household items, secondhand books and the like - the stuff, in other words, of fleamarkets.

Best buys: Documents unearthed at Porta Portese in 2000 - typewritten summaries of allied radio broadcasts - were scandalous proof that Pope (not very) Pius XII had, contrary to the official account, received regular wartime reports about Nazi atrocities against the Jews. When not stumbling upon explosive pieces of historical evidence, Romans go to Porta Portese in search of things they would never find elsewhere: a near exact replacement for some missing crockery, a wind-up radio crank, that perfect antique brass doorknocker.

Where to stay: Hotel Trastevere (00 39 65 81 47 13), a 16th century former palace, is a legendarily good value three-star near the market. Doubles, depending on the season, from euro90.

CANKARJEVO NABREZJE FLEAMARKET, Ljubljana
When: Sundays, 8am-2pm

Ljubljana’s weekly “bosjak” is the icing (or perhaps secondhand bauble) on the cake of the Slovenian capital. Although Ljubljana is thick with attractive baroque and Habsburg buildings and boasts a youthful, prosperous population who congregate in the ever-proliferating riverside cafes, the city remains under-patronised. The Slovenians might bemoan the number of people who still confuse their country with Slovakia, but for the fleamarket fan such unfamiliarity can only be a good thing: the crowds are thinner and the bargain count is higher in Ljubljana. Moreover, the market setting, along the old town embankment of the Ljubljanica river, could hardly be more conducive to strolling, the natural form of fleamarket ambulation.

Best buys: various reminders of bygone imperial glory in the form of Habsburg jewellery, crockery, furniture and paintings. (A friend has decorated the walls of his otherwise minimalist London pad with portraits of forgotten Europeans extracted from fleamarkets throughout the continent - to surprisingly satisfying effect.) Mementos from a later period of domination than the Austro-Hungarian empire include silver pocket watches stamped with the hammer and sickle and, for those of specialised tastes, fading framed photos of Marshall Tito.

Where to stay: The three-star City Hotel (00 38 61 23 49 130), with doubles from euros80, stands out for its central location, cleanliness and well regarded breakfasts in the admittedly lacklustre parade of mid-range Ljubljana hotels. For the fleamarketeer, its reincarnation from the socialist-era Hotel Turist lends it a certain interest.

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