Mercato delle Erbe

Within these walls once stood a church and monastery; then Caserma San Gervasio was housed here, and later the city adapted it into a covered food market. Iron trusses and a glass roof gave trade a permanent home instead of temporary canopies. The layout preserves the old purpose: food counters stand in the center, while wine bars and restaurants occupy the side bays.

On May eighth, eighteen seventy-seven, municipal officials decided to remove the food market from Piazza Maggiore. The pretext was urban decorum. Four hundred thirty-nine traders were to be relocated. Among them were the treccole—street vendors of fruit, vegetables, eggs, butter, cheese, and other inexpensive food.

Their earnings fit into just a few baskets. Baskets of vegetables were placed on backless chairs; peasant women held baskets of butter and ricotta at their hips. These women had no shops of their own, so moving from a busy square meant losing their regular customers. The traders protested, but officials divided them between Piazza de' Marchi—today’s Piazza San Francesco—and Piazza Aldrovandi. Simple wooden canopies were set up for them there.

Thirty-three years later, Piazza San Francesco also had to be cleared. The municipality then converted the former Caserma San Gervasio, which occupied the old premises of a church and monastery, into a covered market. In nineteen ten, the food sellers were moved here permanently. Instead of baskets on chairs, they received permanent places beneath a roof of iron and glass.

The name also came from their wares: Mercato delle Erbe means a market of greens and vegetables. After wartime bombing, the building had to be extensively restored; trade resumed here in nineteen forty-nine.

The hall’s present layout still separates the market’s old activity from its later one. The side bays are given over to restaurants and wine bars, while the central aisle is left to food sellers. By evening, restaurant tables remain occupied longer than the market stalls, but vegetables, fruit, meat, cheese, and fish are still sold in the middle—the wares for which the treccole were once moved from square to square.