5 Best Markets in London

Ethnically and linguistically, London is one of Europe's most diverse metropolises, offering cultural and culinary delights from right across the globe.

It's also renowned for offering a great range of shopping opportunities and you could spend days sampling the offbeat weekend markets.

Kristina Pentland from travel publisher Rough Guides, checks out the bargains to be found at some of the city's trendiest markets.

Portobello Road Market

Situated in one of the wealthiest, celebrity-saturated parts of town, Portobello Road Market is probably London's trendiest market, yet it's always a great spot for a browse and a bargain.

Things kick off at the intersection with Chepstow Road with junky antique stalls and classier, pricier antique shops.

After a brief switch to fruit and vegetables around the Electric Cinema, the market gets a lot more fun and funky at Portobello Green under the Westway flyover, where the emphasis switches to retro clothes and jewellery, odd trinkets, records and books.

(Main market Mon-Wed, Fri & Sat 8am - 6.30pm,
Thurs 8am - 1pm; antiques Sat 6am - 4pm)

Borough Market

Stalls at this weekly gourmet market sell the very best of British produce. There's been a thriving market hereabouts since medieval times.

Squeezed beneath the railway arches between High Street and the cathedral, the present Borough Market is one of the few wholesale fruit and vegetable markets in London still trading under its original Victorian wrought-iron shed.

On weekends, though, it transforms itself into a small foodie haven, and the general public turn up in droves to sample the produce on the gourmet stalls and in the nearby shops.

(8 Southwark Street, Fri noon - 6pm, Sat 9am - 4pm)

Old Spitalfields Market

The capital's premier wholesale fruit and vegetable market until 1991, Old Spitalfields Market now hosts a large, eclectic and fairly sophisticated selection of shops and stalls selling crafts, clothes, food and organic fruit and vegetables.

Half the market was recently knocked down to make way for yet more boxy, glassy offices, but the red-brick and green-gabled eastern half of the original building, built in 1893, survives.

Camden Market

For all its tourist popularity, Camden Market remains a genuinely offbeat place.

The tiny crafts market which began in the cobbled courtyard by the lock has since mushroomed out of all proportion, with everyone trying to grab a piece of Camden High Street and Chalk Farm Road.

More than 1,50,000 shoppers turn up here each weekend, and some stalls now stay open all week long, alongside a crop of shops, cafes and bistros.

The overabundance of cheap leather, hippy chic, naff jewellery and out-and-out kitsch is compensated for by the sheer variety of what's on offer: everything from bootleg tapes to furniture and mountain bikes, alongside a mass of clubwear and street-fashion stalls, and takeaway food outlets ready to fuel hungry shoppers with wok-fried noodles, bowls of paella, burgers, kebabs, cakes and smoothies.

Greenwich Market

Like Camden, Greenwich market is a sprawling, slightly disparate affair, with three main areas to head for.

In the original covered Victorian section is the Crafts Market, which sells twentieth-century antiques (Thurs & Fri 7.30am "" 5.30pm), assorted arts and crafts (Thurs "" Sun 9.30am "" 5.30pm), from spoon mobiles to mounted exotic butterflies, and deli food.

Nearby Stockwell Street holds the Central Market (Sat & Sun 7am-5pm), with a two-floor, indoor secondhand books section, plus outdoor stalls and the indoor Village Market, stuffed with bric-a-brac "" there's even an adjacent organic food market on Saturdays.

This information has been adapted from London DIRECTIONS (1st edition), written by Rob Humphreys, published by Penguin