The Pescaria and the Erberia: Venice's Fish and Vegetable Market
Why is it significant?
Walk into the open hall with its tall Gothic arches and take a deep breath of the sea. The stone under your feet is wet, and on the counters lie the shining creatures of the lagoon and the Adriatic: silver sardines, inky cuttlefish, spider crabs, little grey shrimp still twitching.
Key Facts
| Place | The Pescaria and the Erberia: Venice's Fish and Vegetable Market |
|---|---|
| Address | Campo de la Pescaria, San Polo, 30125 Venezia VE, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 45.44000, 12.33430 |
| Part of Walk | Fish, Wine and Cicchetti: Venice's Rialto Markets and the Bacari of San Polo |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk into the open hall with its tall Gothic arches and take a deep breath of the sea. The stone under your feet is wet, and on the counters lie the shining creatures of the lagoon and the Adriatic: silver sardines, inky cuttlefish, spider crabs, little grey shrimp still twitching. Along the water behind you stretch the green stalls of the Erberia, the fruit and vegetable market.
Fish has been sold on this spot since the Middle Ages, but the hall itself, the Pescaria, only looks medieval. It was built in 1907, designed by Domenico Rupolo with the painter Cesare Laurenti, in a romantic neo-Gothic style. Look at the capitals of the columns: they are carved with fish, crabs, boats and fishermen... a cathedral where the saints have fins. Somewhere among the stalls an old marble plaque sets out the minimum size each kind of fish had to reach before it could be sold.
Watch what the Venetians buy, because it follows the seasons like a calendar. In spring and autumn come the moeche, small green crabs caught in the brief moment when they shed their shells, fried whole and eaten in one bite. In spring the Erberia fills with castraure, the tender first artichokes from the island of Sant'Erasmo, cut early so that the plant will grow more.
And there are always sardines, for the most Venetian recipe of them all: sarde in saor. The fish are fried, then layered with onions cooked slowly in vinegar, often with raisins and pine nuts, and left to rest for a day or two. It was sailors' food, made to keep on long voyages, and the onions were said to help against scurvy. On the night of the Redentore festival in July, families still eat it on boats while they wait for the fireworks.
The market's real enemy is not time but emptiness: in 2022 the population of the historic centre fell below fifty thousand, and every stall that closes is a sign of it. So buy something, even just an apple. Then walk inland along the Ruga dei Spezieri, the old street of the spice sellers, and find the narrow Calle dei Do Mori, where a doorway has been pouring wine, they say, for more than five centuries.