Description
Ballarò is the oldest historic market in Palermo, in the heart of the Albergheria. Every day it fills the streets from Piazza Casa Professa to the bastions of Corso Tukory, toward Porta Sant'Agata: crowded stalls, wooden crates on the asphalt, colors and smells everywhere.
Even before you see it, you hear Ballarò. The vendors shout, sing-song, call out in their most colorful dialect: these are the abbanniate, the soundtrack of the market. Every product is the best and the cheapest, and passersby are invited to believe it.
You come here for the early produce from the countryside around Palermo: seasonal fruit and vegetables, but also meat and fish. The market is above all about food, but among the stalls you can also find the odd item for the home, the kitchen and cleaning.
The second reason to come is the street food, cooked on the spot. Don't miss the panelle, chickpea-flour fritters, and the potato crocchè, which Palermitans also call cazzilli. Then boiled or oven-baked onions, boiled greens, octopus.
For the bravest there is the quarume, veal offal, and the famous panino con la meusa, made with spleen. These are ancient dishes of Palermo's cooking, eaten here without too much ceremony.
Ballarò is not the city's only historic market: it is joined by the Vucciria, the Capo, the Lattarini and the Flea Market. But it is the oldest, visited every day by hundreds of people.
Where does the name come from? No one knows for sure. Perhaps from Bahlara, a village near Monreale from which the Arab merchants came, or from a "market of mirrors" in Arabic.
Then there are those who link it to a captain of King Ferdinand II of Aragon in the 1400s, or to a Ballarò family, who collected a share of food sales on the king's behalf.
Even before you see it, you hear Ballarò. The vendors shout, sing-song, call out in their most colorful dialect: these are the abbanniate, the soundtrack of the market. Every product is the best and the cheapest, and passersby are invited to believe it.
You come here for the early produce from the countryside around Palermo: seasonal fruit and vegetables, but also meat and fish. The market is above all about food, but among the stalls you can also find the odd item for the home, the kitchen and cleaning.
The second reason to come is the street food, cooked on the spot. Don't miss the panelle, chickpea-flour fritters, and the potato crocchè, which Palermitans also call cazzilli. Then boiled or oven-baked onions, boiled greens, octopus.
For the bravest there is the quarume, veal offal, and the famous panino con la meusa, made with spleen. These are ancient dishes of Palermo's cooking, eaten here without too much ceremony.
Ballarò is not the city's only historic market: it is joined by the Vucciria, the Capo, the Lattarini and the Flea Market. But it is the oldest, visited every day by hundreds of people.
Where does the name come from? No one knows for sure. Perhaps from Bahlara, a village near Monreale from which the Arab merchants came, or from a "market of mirrors" in Arabic.
Then there are those who link it to a captain of King Ferdinand II of Aragon in the 1400s, or to a Ballarò family, who collected a share of food sales on the king's behalf.