Venice's larder since 1097: the produce stalls of the Erberia and the fish market of the Pescaria, at their best in the morning.
Last updated August 14, 2026
In a nutshell: the Rialto market is the city's larder - fruit and vegetables in the Erberia, the day's catch in the Pescaria - and it only truly comes alive in the morning. Back to the overview or the Rialto Bridge.
The market shows its best face only in the morning. The produce market, the Erberia, fills the square known as Casaria: vivid stalls offer fruit and vegetables, some of them quite exotic. Nothing grows on the island of Venice, so everything arrives each day from the mainland or the outer reaches of the lagoon; because the streets are so narrow, porters and delivery men haul every crate by hand on hand-trucks, and the Mercato Rialto vaporetto stop makes a handy landing point for boats bringing their goods. At #203 (halfway down the first row of stalls, on the left), Macelleria Equina sells horse (cavallo) and donkey (asino) meat. The produce market shuts on Sundays.
Follow your nose straight ahead and you enter the brick arcade, open to the sky, of the fish market, the Pescaria - at its most vivid and colourful in the morning. The open stalls display the day's catch, Venice's gastronomic speciality: eels, scallops, crustaceans sporting five-inch antennae, and squid bound for tonight's risotto, still steeping in their own ink. This is the Venice that has endured for centuries: dockworkers pitch boxes of fish from delivery boats while customers step off the traghetto (gondola ferry) straight into the fray - a fine glimpse of everyday Venetian life. Buyers are fussy and want to know whether fish is fresh or frozen, farmed or wild, Atlantic or Mediterranean (some stalls post labels). Local fish run small and are judged especially flavourful because of the high salinity at this end of the Adriatic; any salmon you come across is farmed, for the most part from northern Europe, and expect to pay around €30 per kilo (roughly 2.2 pounds) for the finest fish. In the courtyard between the two market buildings, a plaque on the wall lists the minimum sizes at which fish may legally be sold - sardines must be seven centimetres long, peocio (mussels) three. The fish market closes Sunday and Monday.
Keep exploring the market as you move away from the water: you come out in Campo de la Becarie (“Butchers Square”), turn left and follow Ruga dei Spezieri (“Spicers Road”) for about 100 yards. On the way, duck into Antica Drogheria Mascari (on the right at #380), a modest shopfront concealing a huge enoteca with 600 Italian wines arranged by region, plus spices and plenty of gift-worthy edibles. Thirty yards past the drogheria you reach the head of a principal street, Ruga Vechia San Giovanni - the Ruga. This lively thoroughfare is lined with shops where Venetians buy their everyday needs, and it grows steadily less touristy and more utilitarian as you go: fewer knick-knacks, more clothing, bread, shoes, blenders, shampoo and underwear. The second street on your right, Sotoportego dei Do Mori, leads to several well-regarded cicchetti bars gathered around Calle de le Do Spade - local watering holes serving the Venetian version of tapas. If it is lunchtime, consider a progressive feast from one to the next.
The Pescaria has anchored the Rialto since 1097, when fish trading was first recorded here; the neo-Gothic loggia, open at the sides, was raised in 1903 after designs by Domenico Rupolo of the Veneto, and a marble plaque from 1173 on the wall still records the smallest sizes at which lagoon fish may be sold. Arrive at 8am to find the stalls at their most spectacular - and to dodge the sharpest competition from the seagulls. Beyond the silvery sea bass, mackerel and sardines you will meet canoce (mantis shrimp) and tiny schie - the lagoon's own shrimp - moscardini (baby octopus) and, come spring or autumn, moeche, minuscule crabs in soft shell that drive local gourmands wild. Fishmongers will happily descale, gut or fillet your purchases and often throw in a cooking tip. The adjoining Erbaria is where the produce boats tie up and unload: watch in spring for pale Bassano asparagus plus the first artichoke buds of the season - prized castraure raised on Sant'Erasmo, Venice's own farm island, and shot through with violet; winter brings the bitter radicchio rosso of Treviso and the rose-shaped rosa di Gorizia from Friuli; summer offers zucchini flowers, figs and apricots, autumn the woody porcini. Fratelli Moro has been a stallholder for more than forty years, produce from Sant'Erasmo is labelled 'Nostrana', flower stalls appear twice a week, on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and Tuesdays and Fridays draw the biggest crowds - and the best selection. Don't touch the goods: let the stallholders pick for you, and mind your pockets in the crowds.
Pass through the three arches on the square's eastern edge (Campo Cesare Battisti) and you reach a sunny trapezoid of waterfront: the long structure right on the water's edge is the Fabbriche Nuove, Sansovino's 88-metre block from the mid-1500s that gave the market a decorous face toward the Grand Canal. Those walls once housed the Rialto magistrates who ruled on customs and duties - and who spent their tenure battling rats from the market below. Today the building is best known for two restaurants with alfresco tables: Bancogiro, housed in a former public bank - among the very first in Venice - and Naranzaria, whose name recalls the orange traders. The shops around the market belong to the ritual: Casa del Parmigiano ranks among the city's favourite cheese shops, with Morlacca del Grappa from the Veneto Prealps among the local specialities - request an assaggino (a sample) and make use of the vacuum packing service; the butchers Ragazzo Marino and Biancon Nerio & C divide local loyalties, the latter famed for its cured horse salami (salame di cavallo) and the donkey version (salame di asino); and behind the market along the spice merchants' street, Antica Drogheria Mascari sells pepper from Madagascar, cumin from Malta, star anise, olive oils of quality and honey from Tuscany. By midday the spectacle is over and the market-side bars fill up - I Compari is where boiled octopus is the speciality.