Pescheria (Mercato ittico di Chioggia)

Chioggia's retail pescheria occupies about thirty stalls behind the medieval Palazzo Granaio. The municipal tourism portal counts the market among the city's oldest institutions.

Why it matters

No other town on this stretch of the Venetian coast is built so completely around fishing, and the pescheria is where that economy becomes public theatre. The wholesale market contracts and dispatches catches from the Adriatic grounds across the region; some of the fish also supplies the retail stalls along Canal Vena. The city's portal describes fishing as an inheritance as well as an industry. The range includes sole, sea bass, sardines, anchovies, cuttlefish, mantis shrimp, crabs and soft-shell moleche. The summer Sagra del Pesce celebrates the same cuisine.

What to notice

The Portale a Prisca, a stone doorway, is credited to sculptor Amleto Sartori; local chronology dates its carving to 1946 and restoration to 1999. The fishmongers are known in Chioggia as i mògnoli. The market's range includes orate, branzini, sogliole, sarde, alici, seppie, calamari, scampi, canocchie, granchi and lagoon shellfish such as caparossoli, peoci and bevarasse. Above the stalls, the brick Palazzo Granaio recalls the city's medieval food supply.

Context and history

The market grew against the Palazzo Granaio, which the Chioggia historian Aristide Naccari dated to the first half of the fourteenth century and which local research attributes, probably, to 1328 under the praetor Marino Morosini. The palace began as the community's grain store, its ground floor an open colonnade where goods changed hands in the shade. Over the centuries the loggia was walled, subdivided and rented out; between 1920 and 1940 the bays on the canal side served as fruit and vegetable warehouses, and after 1950 the fondamenta in front became the fixed seat of the fish market. A 1999 campaign secured the pescheria al minuto and restored Sartori's portal. The operator dates the present market structure to 2002, with later modernization of refrigeration and sales technology. The retail pescheria is distinct from the wholesale Mercato Ittico that supplies it.