Charleston City Market, Charleston, Bezoekersgids & wat te doen in de buurt

Charleston City Market is a historic public market in the heart of downtown Charleston, South Carolina, where vendors have sold food and goods since the 1790s. Today it is best known for the handwoven sweetgrass baskets made by Gullah Geechee artisans, a craft that came to the Lowcountry from West Africa.

The story behind it

The market was set up in the 1790s as a public place to buy produce and meat for the city. A persistent myth calls it a slave market, but it never was one. Even so, its story is bound up with slavery. Enslaved and free Black people worked and sold here, and the market stayed a centre of Black commerce and community life after emancipation and through the Jim Crow era.

The sweetgrass baskets are the clearest living link to that past. The coiling technique came with enslaved people from the rice-growing parts of West Africa, including Sierra Leone and Senegal. On Lowcountry rice plantations, women made broad, shallow baskets to winnow rice, tossing the grain so the chaff blew away. The craft survived slavery, the Civil War and segregation, and it is still practised by the Gullah Geechee families who sell their work here. Charleston itself endured a long siege in the Civil War, commonly counted as 567 days, which shaped the city the market serves.

What to look for

• Look at the coiled sweetgrass baskets up close, and notice the tight, even stitching of palmetto strips binding the bundles of grass.
• Find the large, round, shallow baskets, which echo the winnowing baskets once used to fan rice on Lowcountry plantations.
• Walk the length of the open-air sheds and notice how the market runs for several blocks, with stalls on both sides of the aisle.
• Stop at the Greek Revival market hall at the Meeting Street end, which marks the formal entrance to the market.

Tips for your visit

• Allow 30 to 60 minutes if you want to browse the stalls and talk with the basket makers, longer if you plan to buy food or souvenirs.
• Go earlier in the day for more room to look, since the aisles fill up with visitors later on.
• Walking through the market costs nothing. Vendor and stall hours vary, so check current opening hours before you plan around them.
• Ask a basket maker about her work before you buy. Handwoven sweetgrass takes many hours, and the artisans are usually glad to explain it.

See it on a quest

Murder Mystery: Death in the Shadows in Charleston is a good way to see the market as one stop on a longer walk through the historic district. You reach each place on foot, the app tells you about it as you arrive, and you solve a puzzle in what is in front of you. It is a paid quest, and one ticket covers the whole group.

Ghost Hunt in Charleston suits anyone who likes their history with a darker edge. You walk between stops around the old city, hear about each place as you reach it, and solve a puzzle on the spot. It is a paid quest, and one ticket covers the whole group.