Mercado da Ribeira: The Market of the Varinas
Why is it significant?
Go in through the main doors of the Mercado da Ribeira and choose your side. One half is a buzzing food hall of long shared tables. The other, if you come in the morning, is still a real market: fish on ice, crates of fruit, flower stalls, and traders who have done this all their lives.
Key Facts
| Place | Mercado da Ribeira: The Market of the Varinas |
|---|---|
| Address | Avenida 24 de Julho 49, 1200-479 Lisboa, Portugal |
| Geo Coordinates | 38.70700, -9.14570 |
| Part of Walk | Ginjinha, Salt Cod and Custard Tarts: A Lisbon Food Walk from the Baixa to Cais do Sodré |
| Generated | Generated |
Go in through the main doors of the Mercado da Ribeira and choose your side. One half is a buzzing food hall of long shared tables. The other, if you come in the morning, is still a real market: fish on ice, crates of fruit, flower stalls, and traders who have done this all their lives.
There has been a market here since 1882, on a strip of land reclaimed from the Tagus when the riverside avenue was built. It was called the Mercado da Ribeira Nova, and almost everything Lisbon ate passed through it: fish from the boats, vegetables from the market gardens around the city, fruit from the Algarve and the Oeste. For much of the twentieth century it was also the city's wholesale market.
The great characters of this market were the varinas, the fishwives. Many of their families came originally from Ovar, in the north, and the word varina comes from that town. Barefoot, in dark skirts and gold earrings, they carried flat baskets of sardines on their heads and walked the steep hills of Lisbon calling out their wares. Painters, photographers and poets adored them, and they became a symbol of the city itself.
In 2014 half of the hall was turned into a food court, with stalls run by well-known Portuguese chefs, and it quickly became one of the busiest places in Lisbon. Purists grumble, but there is a certain symmetry: the market is still feeding people from all over the world, just as the port once did. And in June, when the sardines are at their fattest and grilled on every street for the feast of Saint Anthony, the whole city still smells of them.
Look at how the fruit and vegetables are labelled by origin: Rocha pears from the Oeste, cherries from Fundão, oranges from the Algarve. Portuguese shoppers buy by place the way the French buy wine. Now step back outside and cross toward the bridge that carries Rua do Alecrim. Underneath it runs a short street whose roadway has been painted a very bright pink.