7 Best Shopping in Asheville, North Carolina

The biggest and arguably the best art gallery in town has changing exhibits of regional sculpture, paintings, fine crafts, and photographs.

Shopping is excellent and local all over downtown Asheville, with around 200 boutiques, including more than 30 art and crafts galleries. Several streets, notably Biltmore Avenue, Broadway Street, Lexington Avenue,Haywood Street, and Wall Street, are lined with small, independently owned stores. In fact, there are only two chain retailers in all of downtown.

French Broad Chocolate Lounge—so popular it had to move to this much-larger location on Pack Square (though the line is still sometimes out the door)—makes its own delicious chocolate candy, but that's just the start. As the name suggests, it's also a lounge, where you can sit in comfort and enjoy not only truffles and other premium chocolates but also ice cream, cookies, brownies, various kinds of hot and cold chocolate drinks, and specialty coffees and teas. Adjoining is the grab-and-go Chocolate Boutique. The owners also have a small chocolate factory and tasting room at 21 Buxton Avenue, with guided tours daily, starting at $3.

Just before its opening in 1929, the Grove Arcade, which covers an entire city block, was trumpeted as "the most elegant building in America" by its builder, W. E. Grove, the man also responsible for the Grove Park Inn. He envisioned a new kind of retail, office, and residential complex. Grove died before completing the project, and a planned 14-story tower was never built. Still, the building is an architectural wonder, with gargoyles galore. Now it's a public market with about 40 locally owned shops and restaurants, along with apartments, office space, and an outdoor market. A self-guided architectural tour (download a map from the website) takes about 45 minutes.

Somewhere between an art gallery, an antique mall, and a craft fair, a stroll through Marquee is like touring a museum of Asheville's most creative visual artists. Offerings range from whimsical decor to functional furniture. There's an on-site bar to sip while you browse, and leashed dogs are welcome. 

Odyssey Center for the Ceramic Arts has the largest number of working clay artists in the region. It has two ceramics galleries, plus pottery studios and clay classes. The main gallery, Odyssey Co-Op Gallery, has a large and high-quality selection of ceramic works, both functional and decorative, as well as figurative and abstract sculpture, by 25 juried clay artists. Odyssey Clayworks offers classes and has a gallery of clay work by students and others.

In a 1938 building that once housed a five-and-dime, Woolworth Walk features the curated work of more than 170 crafts artists, in 20,000 square feet of exhibit space on two levels. There's even a working soda fountain, built to resemble the original Woolworth luncheonette.