Mercato di Rialto, Venice

Mercato di Rialto is Venice’s long-running food market, where fruit and vegetables are still sold each day. Venice’s market moved to this bend of the Grand Canal in 1097, and the quarter became the Republic’s commercial heart, with different trades assigned their own areas. The fish hall under the open loggias is the Pescheria, a twentieth-century neo-Gothic building; its counters display lagoon and Adriatic catches including squid, cuttlefish, mullet, eels, crabs and octopus.

After a fire in 1514, the district rose again around San Giacomo, the small church that survived. The arcaded Fabbriche Nuove were designed by Jacopo Sansovino in 1553 and still house law courts. The market’s organised separation of trades remains part of what makes this place distinctive.