What was claimed
A video showing a street with makeshift stalls and people selling things from blankets on the ground was taken in Paris, “the city of love”.
Our verdict
The video actually shows a flea market in Marseille, in the south of France.
Video shows a market in Marseille, not Paris
9 May 2024
A video of a crowded street with makeshift market stalls has been shared more than 14,000 times on Facebook, along with the caption “WELCOME TO PARIS. THE CITY OF LOVE”. But the video was actually taken at a flea market in Marseille.
The 18-second clip shows a street lined with vans and umbrellas with blankets underneath, on top of which are selections of items. There are lots of people walking around, and some are bending down to inspect things that appear to be for sale. The caption seems to be ironic, as there are a number of negative comments on some of the posts.
A reverse image search shows that the video has also appeared on YouTube, where it has been viewed more than 2,400 times. It is captioned in German “Paris ist immer eine Reise wert”, along with an emoji of a sad face. According to Google, this translates as “Paris is always worth a trip”.
The earliest example of this video Full Fact could find is from June 2023, when Jean-Philippe Courtaro, a local politician in Marseille, posted it on X (formerly Twitter) saying the video was taken at a Marseille flea market.
Other posts on TikTok at the time also say the video was filmed in Marseille. Searching “flea market Marseille” on Getty images shows a number of landmarks that can be identified in the video, including a chimney with a brown roof behind it, and a graffitied structure to the right.
Mr Courtaro also used the #GrandRemplacement hashtag in his post. Le Grand Remplacement, or the Great Replacement, is a theory that an indigenous European population is being replaced by non-European immigrants. The term was popularised by French white nationalist author Renaud Camus.
Many of the comments underneath Mr Courtaro’s post in June 2023, and the video which claimed to be in Paris in April and May 2024, also make claims about there being too many immigrants in France. Immigration is likely to be a topic of debate in the upcoming European elections, which take place between 6 and 9 June 2024.
We often see miscaptioned images and videos that don’t show what they claim to. For tips on how to verify content before you share it, read our guide.
Image courtesy of Pixabay
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as partly false because the video was filmed in Marseille, not Paris.