Ballarò

Ballarò is the oldest of Palermo's markets, in the heart of the Albergheria quarter, running from Piazza Casa Professa towards Corso Tukory. It's a working food market — fruit, vegetables, spices, meat and fish piled in wooden crates — with the vendors calling out their prices in the singsong cries Palermitans call abbanniate.

The greengrocers sell cooked street food too: panelle (chickpea fritters), crocchè, boiled or roasted onions, octopus, and pani ca meusa, the spleen sandwich. Even the name is argued over — an Arab village near Monreale, an Arabic phrase for a fair, or a 15th-century captain called Ballarò.