Featured Image: Canton Tourism
From the moment you round the corner onto Canton, Mississippi’s Historic Square and catch sight of the grandiose Greek Revival Courthouse dome (it’s twenty feet across and thirty feet high), you understand that you’ve stepped into one of those quintessential Southern towns that are the reason the phrase “hidden gem” exists.
Canton has become one of the most compelling destinations in the South for antiques hunters, art lovers, and those wise passersby who decided to stop on a whim and found themselves carrying on with a car full of treasures.
Don’t let a stop here be a happy accident – instead, put a pin on the map for your next road trip centered around art and antiques. Here’s your itinerary.
The Historic Square
You can appreciate Canton’s architectural intrigue without spending a dime. Take a stroll around the Historic Square for a minute before you go deeper into the town’s artistic points of interest.
The Madison County Courthouse, built in 1855 with bricks salvaged from its condemned predecessor, has been the center of this town for nearly 170 years. It has welcomed railroads and sent soldiers to war, it’s served as a courthouse, library, theater, and yellow fever hospital. The ironwork fence once held the paintings of local artists. In 1982, the Courthouse Square District earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places, recognized as one of the three best examples in Mississippi.
The Canton Flea Market Arts and Crafts Show
2026 show dates: Thursday, May 14, and Thursday, October 8
The Canton Flea Market Arts and Crafts Show started in 1965 as a modest art show, with local painters hanging their work on the aforementioned iron fence surrounding the Courthouse lawn. Sixty-odd years later, it’s one of the largest outdoor craft markets in the South, drawing artists, craftspeople, and thousands of visitors to town twice a year.
It’s an event worth planning your whole trip around: vendors from across the country come to snag a booth. If you’re visiting this May, bring comfy shoes and plenty of cash.
CantonTown (Opening Soon)
When the Piggly Wiggly at Highways 16 and 43 closed in 2018, it left 35,000 square feet sitting largely idle in what Cantonians still call the Big Pig. That’s changing soon.
David Murrell caught the collecting bug as a teenager at the A&I Building in Jackson. He ran a booth at the Fairgrounds Flea Market and eventually opened the Flowood Antique Flea Market with two partners. It ran for fifteen years, and now the market will have its homecoming in Canton, where Murrell has lived since 1985.
CantonTown is not a flea market in the conventional sense. Thirty-six vendors fill the building selling everything from pre-WWII clocks to antique maps, rare coins, custom pet portraits, and video games. Murrell’s own section, the Odditorium, will anchor the back of the building.
Mississippi Art Colony
The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art describes the Mississippi Art Colony as the oldest artist-run organization of its kind in the country. It was founded in 1948 at the Allison Wells Hotel in Way, Mississippi, where a handful of artists looked around a beautiful resort and thought: what if we just stayed here and painted? Twenty people showed up for that first workshop and the organization has been going ever since.
It has survived a hotel fire in 1963 that destroyed the original venue, multiple relocations across the state, and the general challenges of keeping an arts organization alive across eight decades. Today, it meets at Lake Tia-O’Khata in Louisville, Mississippi, for five-day workshops in late April and early October.
Where to Shop Year-Round
Merri Pennie’s Mercantile and Tea Room
There are vendor malls, and then there’s Merri Pennie’s. The front of the house is stacked with high-end antiques and work by local artists, while the back hosts a charming tearoom available for high teas, birthday parties, graduations, and any pinky’s out occasion you deem worthy. It’s a can’t-miss, one of the more distinctive shopping experiences on the Square.
Reflections Collectibles and Antiques
A Jackson native with family roots in Madison County, Dorothy Chatman spent 22 years in real estate and a stretch in social work before opening Reflections Collectibles and Antiques in 2010. The store carries true antiques and collectibles – a significant portion of inventory comes through donations and estate sales from customers Chatman knows personally, and the rest she hand-selects.
Sulm’s Gifts
Sulm’s has been on the Square since the early 1900s, first as a general mercantile, then as a gift shop reopened by a family niece, and since October 1985, under the ownership of Erin Noble, who bought it the week before the Canton Flea Market and never looked back. Sulm’s stocks Mississippi-made items whenever possible, displaying them in ways that help customers visualize them at home.
Find more Southern travel inspiration here.
| This article is presented in partnership with Canton Tourism, a Modern South Founding Partner.
