Specialist shops are worth a detour for interesting presents and self-indulgence, but they also reveal much about the quirky, living culture of a city.
You have no idea of the depth and breadth of goods on offer until you enter the door of the expert. Many have been run by the same family for generations and the objects on show - some too precious to sell - make them like museums run by commercial curators. Such shops are usually worth visiting even if you buy nothing at all. Unlike the anonymous morgues of modern retail chains, they are often alive with incident and interesting characters.
And by shopping at the specialist, you are keeping alive a tradition of good service and expertise that that survives in the face of mass-production.
Tamburini
Location: in the city centre - Via Caprarie 1, 40124 Bolgona.
Tel: (00 39) 051 234726.
Fax: (00 39) 051 232226.
Web: www.tamburini.com
Open: Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 9am-7pm, Tuesday and Thursday 9am-2.30pm.
Specialities: Regional food, particularly pasta, cured meats and cheese.
Sample prices: 12,000 lire (£4) for a bottle of Tamburini's prosecco; 16,000 lire (£5.30) for 500g gnocchi with porcini; 40,000 lire (£13.50) for a 2kg mortadella.
Tamburini's is a spectacular deli in a city famous for its sensuous appetite. The smell of the wood-fired rotisserie pulls you off the street into a long, marble-floored room, where hundreds of dishes are prepared daily. One counter is a white expanse of cheese, another a wall of cured meats. You can take the food away for picnics and presents, or eat at the self-service restaurant.
Ljunggrens Pappershandel
Location: In the Old Town, near the Royal Palace - Köpmangatan 3, Gamla Stan, Stockholm.
Tel: (00 46) 8 676 0383.
Fax: (00 46) 8 103377.
Open: Tuesday to Friday 11am-6pm, Saturday 11am-3pm (closed on Saturdays in July and August).
Specialities: papers from all over the world; hand-made books; sealing wax.
Sample prices: 12 kronor (£1) for a sheet of Swedish hand-made paper; 350 kronor (£27) for a hand-made book.
The interior is as exquisite as a landscape under snow, with sheets of white paper hanging from the walls and a calm, slightly muffled atmosphere: a peace of paper.
The finest Japanese hand-made sheets weigh in at 7.5g per square metre, (compared with 80g for photocopier paper). Others are strong and flexible enough to use as curtains.
Italian papers are another speciality. A man who restores pre-1500 books for the Vatican once told the owner she had the best selection of papers he had ever seen.
Die Imaginare Manufaktur
Location: in Kreutzberg, Kottbusser Tor U-bahn 1,12 and 15 - Oranienstrasse 26, D-01999 Berlin.
Tel: (00 49) 30 25 88 66 14.
Fax: (00 49) 30 25886615.
Web: www.blindenanstalt.de
Open: Monday to Thursday 9am-4.45pm, Friday 9am-3.45pm.
Specialities: contemporary and traditional brushes.
Sample prices: DM44.5 (£15) for a set of four brush egg-cups; DM120 (£40) for a bristly fruit bowl.
This shop is run by the Institute for Blind People in Berlin, which has had a workshop making traditional brushes, matting and wickerwork for nearly 100 years. In the late 1990s, business was slow and a design company across the road offered to help.
After studying the methods of the workshop, it came up with new uses for traditional brushes, joining bottle brushes together to make a bristly fruit bowl and turning circular scrubbers into egg-cups.
In just nine months, business trebled, and the products are now sold all over the world. Some are stocked in London by Babylon in the Fulham Road (020-7376 7255).
Il Gelato di San Crispino
Location: near the Trevi fountain and Barberini Metro - Via Panetteria,42, Rome (the original shop is at Via Acaia, 56-56a, San Giovanni).
Tel: (00 39 06) 6793924.
Open: noon-12.30am. Monday, Wednesday-Sunday, closed Tuesday.
Specialities: ice-creams and sorbets; their zabaione is particularly famous.
Sample prices: tubs from 3,000 lire (£1) upwards.
The secret of these exceptional ice-creams lies in the freshness and quality of the ingredients. The sweet shock of the lemon sorbet comes from Amalfi lemons and the richly boozy zabaione is flavoured with 20-year-old marsala. Fruits are only sold in season, with the late summer red currants, raspberries and peaches giving way to pear, pomegranate and a fragrant grape sorbet. Anything unsold at the end of the day is thrown away: they start afresh each morning.
Deyrolle
Location: near metro Rue du Bac - 46, rue Du Bac, 75007 Paris.
Tel: (00 33 1) 42 22 30 07. Fax: (00 33 1) 42 22 32 02.
Open: Monday-Saturday 10am-6.45pm.
Specialities: taxidermy, natural history, geology.
Sample prices: Ffr2,900 (£287) to hire a stuffed zebra for two days; Ffr850 (£84) to buy a stuffed rat.
Deyrolle is full of life caught in freeze-frame. A cat naps curled up in a pram; a zebra prances; a dog looks at you around a display case, alert and ready to bark at the intruder.
You can spend hours wandering over the creaky parquet looking at the animals and going through drawers stuffed with surprises such as a bunch of eyes on wires staring up like surreal flowers.
Small children pat the animals; dogs growl at them. Some older customers have asked if they themselves can be stuffed. Deyrolle declines, but can there be a higher compliment to the taxidermist's art?
Au Grand Rasoir
Location: near the Grand Place and Gare Centrale - 7, rue de l'Hôpital, 1000 Brussels.
Tel/fax: (00 32 2) 512 49 62.
Open: Monday to Saturday 9.30am-6.30pm.
Specialities: knives, razors, scissors; badger-hair shaving brushes.
Sample prices: kitchen knives from Bfr300 (£4.80); Bfr1,250 (£20) for a mushroom cutting knife and brush; Bfr2,000-11,000 (£32-£177) for a badger-hair shaving brush.
There are 2,500 blades on display, from dog-paw trimmers to wallpaper scissors to sea-urchin crackers.
The owner, Monsieur Cielen learned his trade from his grandparents and has travelled around factories and workshops from the age of six. This is a specialists' world and he needs to know the technical details of each tool and each trade. He says he sees a return of interest in quality and objects that are made to last: there has even been a revival of cut-throat razors.
Robert Mills Architectural Antiques
Location: Near Ikea in Eastville, off the M32 - Narroways Road, Eastville, Bristol BS2 9XB.
Open: Monday-Friday 9.30am-5.30pm.
Tel: 0117 955 6542.
Fax: 0117 955 8146.
Specialities: architectural salvage, especially neo-gothic church woodwork and Victorian pub interiors.
Sample prices: £200 for a pew; £800 for a Victorian carved oak pulpit; £1,500-£4,000 for a confessional box.
Bob Mills started trading in architectural salvage when he saw church interiors being destroyed and stained glass windows smashed for a few pounds of lead.
In his warehouse on the edge of Bristol, the stripped bones of buildings await resurrection. Flights of steps lead nowhere; angels watch over you; doors are stacked like packs of cards; an enormous circus awning, a vaudeville white elephant, awaits a home.
In the 1980s, much of it went for export, but now there has been a resurgence of interest in neo-gothic furnishings. Confession boxes make good telephone booths or showers, and hi-tech kitchens can be hidden behind high-church fittings, with a cookbook open like the bible on a brass stand and holiday snaps slid into a hymn board.
Antigua Casa Crespo
Location: Bilbao metro - Calle del Divino Pastor, 29, 28004 Madrid.
Open: Monday to Friday. 10am-1.30pm, 4.30pm-8pm.
Tel: (00 34 91) 521 56 54.
Speciality: espadrilles.
Sample prices: 625 pesetas (£2.50) for a pair of espadrilles; 1,000 pesetas (£4) for a natural fibre basket.
In this quiet, family-run shop, there are woven bags, coils of rope and brushes made from natural plant fibres, but mostly they just sell espadrilles in 30 colours and 15 styles. Stripes of colour run along the shelves to show the fabrics on offer, from bright orange, turquoise and bubblegum pink to subtler shades such as soft cherry red and mushroom.
The shoes are made in the north central Rioja region in workshops where some of the sewers have worked for decades.
Bric-a-Brac & Bric-a-Brac 2
Location: Near the Old Town square - Tynska 7, Prague.
Tel: Bric-a-Brac 1: (00 42 0) 2 232 6484.
Open: Monday to Sunday 10am-6pm.
Specialities: beautiful small objects, art deco.
Sample prices: 900 Koruna (£16) for a 1940s fountain pen; 60 Koruna (£10) for a 1950s wooden toy drummer on wheels.
Well-made objects bought in the good times were kept through the bad. Now, in the new, shiny post-Communist age, it is time to sell. These two shops stand out among the many of their kind in Prague because of the owners' genuine love of the articles.
Bric a Brac 1 is a dim, exciting cave which is the haunt of collectors of small objects such as thimbles, scissors and sets of scales. Bric-a-Brac 2 is a large, light shop, a haven for art deco and the styles of other decades that is arranged like an enormous, intricate still life: a row of evening bags hanging on a line like bobbing apples, pearls on seashells, elegant irons, wooden toy boats, perfume sprayers, cameras, Mosser crystal, little boxes, opera records.
PCJ Hajenius
Location: near the Dam - Rokin 92-96, 1012 KZ Amsterdam.
Open: Monday noon-6pm, Tuesday to Saturday 9.30am-6pm, except Thursday 9.30am -9pm, Sunday noon- 5pm.
Tel: (00 31) 20 623 74 94.
Fax: (00 31) 20 6387221.
Web: www.hajenius.com
Specialities: cigars and pipes.
Sample prices: 15-78 guilders (£4.50-£23) for a Cuban cigar; 60-2,000 guilders (£18-£593) for a pipe.
Like the rest of Amsterdam, this is a shop at ease with pleasure. People come in briefly just to sniff the perfumed air.
The building has a dignified opulence. The walls are tiled with marble and the ceiling covered in leather - when built in 1915 it was felt that the thinners used in paint might taint the cigars.
There is a a cigar library at the back, and the shop staff conduct cigar-smoking lessons to show novices how to keep the cigar at the right temperature.
• Trading Places - Europe's Finest Specialist Shops, by Hattie Ellis is published by Mitchell Beazley
