Christmas Markets Around the World

In search of the oldest market

At least six cities claim the title, with dates from 1296 to 1570. They’re all right in their own way. They just aren’t talking about the same thing.

The old documents they point to approve, depending on the city, a meat market, a winter supply market for local residents only, or a Saint Nicholas fair. None of them describes what we’d call a Christmas market today: a holiday market of decorations, treats and nativity scenes.

That’s what makes their history interesting. These markets didn’t start because of Christmas. They became Christmas markets over time.

Vienna: the most cited date

It’s the most interesting of the six, and worth a closer look.

Travel writers often name Vienna as having the world’s oldest Christmas market, a “December market” granted to Viennese merchants by Duke Albert I. Austria’s Rekord-Institut says 1296; others say 1298; and one German article admits that “the date varies by source.” Both point to the same source: the City of Vienna’s official history wiki.

But if you read that wiki yourself, it tells a different story. It doesn’t mention 1298, and it doesn’t say Albert I founded a Christmas market. It says today’s Christkindlmarkt is the last remnant of the yearly market rights granted to the people of Vienna in 1296 and 1396: general market rights, with nothing about Christmas. The first mention of a market clearly tied to the holidays is from 1722: a Nikolo-, Weihnachts- und Krippenmarkt, a Saint Nicholas, Christmas and nativity market.

Vienna’s real link to the nativity scene is elsewhere, and it does have dates. According to the same wiki, nativity scenes came to Vienna from Italy in the 1500s through the Franciscan and Jesuit churches. From the 1780s on, they moved into the Christmas market, with a nativity market held on the Graben. Then the Christmas tree took over: the change started in the 1820s, and by the 1830s the tree had won.

The other contenders, one by one

Dresden: 1434, the best documented

The Striezelmarkt has the most precise charter of all: on October 19, 1434, Elector Frederick II of Saxony and his brother Duke Sigismund granted the city a privilege “for the common good and the welfare of the city of Dresden.” But the privilege covers a one-day free meat market, held on Christmas Eve. The link to the Striezel, the Christmas bread we know as stollen, comes later: city accounts mention it in 1471, the market’s name only attaches to it around 1500 and becomes official in 1548.

Bautzen: 1384, a royal privilege

King Wenceslaus IV granted Budissin a free meat market before Christmas, confirmed and strengthened in 1505 by a charter banning any competition in Upper Lusatia. The current name, Wenzelsmarkt, honors King Wenceslaus himself, not Saint Wenceslaus (the “Good King Wenceslas” of the carol), whose feast falls in September.

Frankfurt: 1393, a date without a published document

Two consistent sources, the German reference article and the local press, state that a Christmas market is attested there as early as 1393, but neither reproduces or cites the document. The medieval market there was a winter provisioning market, closed to outside merchants.

Munich: 1310, and the city’s caution

The date circulates everywhere. The City of Munich’s official press release stays cautious: it places the origin “in the 14th century” without a document, dates the first tangible mention to 1642 (a Nikolaidult, a Saint Nicholas fair reserved for Munich merchants) and puts the shift to a true Christmas market in 1806.

Nuremberg: the most famous, without a date

The city of the Christkindlesmarkt, the most famous in Germany, claims no date: its origins are given as unknown, the oldest physical evidence being a wooden box from 1628. So the best known of all is the one that says least about its beginnings.

Strasbourg: 1570, and an explanation

It’s the only case where the date comes with an explanation, and not just a trade privilege. We tell it, nuances included, on the France page.

It works the other way too: the Christmas markets of South Tyrol feel like they’re straight out of the Middle Ages, but they’re recent, with exact start dates. Bolzano and Bressanone held their first ones in 1991. The medieval feel is a choice, and it works beautifully.

Markets where the nativity is the subject

A few markets are mainly about nativity scenes, rather than Christmas markets that happen to sell some.

Barcelona, the Fira de Santa Llúcia. 1786 is held to be the oldest and most reliable date, based on two testimonies: the personal diary of Rafael Amat, Baron of Maldà, who notes on December 13 a fair in front of the cathedral with “many little nativity houses” in clay and cardboard; and confirmation by the folklorist Joan Amades. In the 19th century, three pessebre fairs coexisted in Barcelona. See also Catalonia.

Munich, the Kripperlmarkt. Less known than Munich’s big market, attested as early as 1757 on the Rindermarkt, and billed as the largest nativity market in Germany. A date, incidentally, far better established than that of the big market in the same city.

Rome, Piazza Navona. Continuity claimed since 1872, after Italian unification, taking over from a market on Piazza Sant’Eustachio. Nativity figures have been sold there from the start, alongside the feast of the Befana.

Cusco, the Santurantikuy. The name blends Quechua and Spanish: santu and rantikuy, “buy yourself a little saint.” A religious crafts fair held every December 24 on the Plaza de Armas, recognized as cultural heritage of the Peruvian nation in 2009. The 16th-century origin, sometimes tied to the evangelization begun in 1582, is a historians’ reconstruction, not a dated document. See Latin America.

What the names tell us

A market’s name often tells you who brings the presents there, and so which side of the Reformation that region was on.

Christkindlmarkt, Christkindlesmarkt, Christkindelsmärik

“Market of the Christ Child,” in Vienna, Nuremberg and Strasbourg; Nuremberg’s -es- variant is an archaic genitive. The figure of the Christkind appeared in the wake of the Reformation as an alternative to Saint Nicholas. The University of Hamburg notes that its invention is sometimes credited to Luther, who supposedly mentioned it as early as 1531; the theologian it quotes adds that the attribution remains debated. (In America, “Christkindl” became “Kris Kringle,” another name for Santa: the Christ Child turned into the very saint he was meant to replace.)

Weihnachtsmarkt

The general German word, with no gift-bringer in the name. It covers late-medieval markets where people stocked up on meat and winter supplies, which started adding toys and children’s pastries in the 1300s.

Fira de Nadal, feria de belenes

In Catalan and Spanish, fira and feria mean fair, and in both Barcelona and Seville, the name says what’s for sale: nativity scenes.

Mercatino di Natale

Italian for “little Christmas market.” The Tyrolean version dates from 1991.

And finally, two markets that don’t claim to be old at all. The German Christmas Market in Quebec City was started in 2008 by a group of German women, in a parish hall, for one afternoon. It reported about six hundred eighty thousand visitors in 2019. And Chicago’s Christkindlmarket, opened in 1996 and modeled on Nuremberg’s, has become one of the best known in the United States; you’ll find it and the others, with this year’s dates, in Christmas markets in the United States. No claim to ancient roots, no family tree: just an idea that caught on.

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