Palermo (gro) The Ballarò was the scene of an art action lasting several days in these autumn days of 2016. It was less about strictly aesthetic representations and more about a lively confession. It was street artists who went spiritedly wild in the Albergheria neighborhood, a centerpiece of Palermo’s old town. With their spontaneously sprayed images (our reproduction of a newspaper page of the “Giornale di Sicilia”), with acrobatic demonstrations and theatrical interventions, the artists told of the pride of the people, of pride in “their” city, of the vitality of Palermo, which shows itself not least in the lively market life.
The oldest market in Palermo?
The Ballarò, which like most other markets takes place every weekday, so one hears between the piazza Casa Professa at Corso Tuckory and the Porta St. Agata, is the oldest market of Palermo. This claim had once been made by the Vucciria near via Roma. But the dispute has been settled, because the Vucciria, because of a failed urban redevelopment project only a sad shadow existence. The “Shanghai”, the legendary trattoria run by the equally legendary Benedetto Basile, from which Renato Guttuso painted the market in piazza Caracciolo, is also now closed.
The belly of the old town.
The Ballarò is all the more bursting with vitality. It is something like the “belly (of the old town) of Palermo” And indeed you get fish nowhere else so fresh and cheap as on the Ballarò. The range of vegetables and fruits is also overwhelming. The same is true, logically, for the presence of the butchers and the other vendors who are concerned about the supply of the old town residents and want to make their business with it.
Large supermarkets are (still) the exception.
Markets like the Ballarò are not merely shopping centers, but also popular meeting places for the residents of the old town. This has a tradition in Italy that continues to this day, especially in the south of the country, where good weather is the normal weather. In addition, Sicily’s open-air markets are also functioning schools of integration. Here, as hardly anywhere else, locals meet with black and North Africans, there the pub landlord is a Pakistani, the Figaro a Sudanese, the cloth merchant a Chinese and the man at the cash register of the espresso bar an Indian. Large supermarkets are still the exception in the historic center of Palermo. One of them is Lidl, which opened a large, super-modern store in via Roma just over a year ago, offering its services even on Sundays. But they will hardly ever be able to be as fresh as the fish on the Ballarò at Lidl, not even on Sunday.