Old Salt Granary

This freshly restored building was once Compiègne’s salt granary, and in medieval times, this whole area was the city’s financial district. You’re standing on Place du Change, about to head down Rue des Lombards. Back then, “Lombards” was the name for merchants from northern Italy. These traders started out bartering goods, since coins were in short supply, but over time, they evolved into pawnbrokers and became the pioneers of consumer credit. This granary was built in 1342 to store salt, which back then was under a royal monopoly and heavily taxed through the gabelle. People would come here to buy this essential commodity, always paying the king’s tax on it — a bit like an early version of VAT. You could think of it as an early version of VAT. The gabelle was no small matter, it made up about 6% of royal income. Remember, salt was essential back then. It was the only reliable way to preserve food, like we rely on refrigerators today. Under the Ancien Régime, headed by Louis XIV and ended with the Revolution, salt was even used as a form of currency. The word “salary” comes from the Latin word salarium, which originally meant a ration of salt before it came to mean wages in general. The salt tax wasn’t applied equally across the country. Regions subject to the “grande gabelle,” like Paris, had to buy large amounts of salt whether they needed it or not. “Petite gabelle” areas, like Lyon, had more flexibility. Then there were the lucky “franc salé” regions, like Brittany, which didn’t pay the salt tax at all, and that’s one reason why salted butter is such a big deal there. Believe it or not, butter used to be salted almost everywhere in Europe, mainly to make it last longer. But in France, the gabelle made salt so expensive that people gave up the habit in many regions. So now you know more than you ever thought you would about the history of salt! The gabelle was abolished in 1790. Though Napoleon didn’t bring it back, he kept salt as a taxed product, just not under monopoly rules, unlike tobacco, which still has its own special regulations and can only be sold in licensed shops. After the Revolution, the granary was sold into private hands. Later, the city repurchased it and converted it first into a meat hall, then a fish market. In 1977, it was restored by the municipality and became the small covered market you can still visit today.