Mercato di Rio Terà San Leonardo Site Features

Stalls here sell mostly fruit and vegetables, set up along a wide, plain street rather than a dedicated market square -- there's no grand architecture to see, just the everyday rhythm of a Cannaregio shopping street doing what it's done since the canal beneath it was filled in.

The market sets up along Rio Terà San Leonardo, and the name is the explanation: rio terà means a canal that was filled in. This is a waterway turned into a street, which is why it is wide, straight and flat in a district where nothing else is.

That width is the reason the market is here at all. Venetian calli are too narrow for stalls on both sides; this one is not, because it was sized for boats rather than for people.

The street forms part of the walking chain between the railway station and the Rialto, so the market sits directly in the path of a very large flow of arriving visitors -- most of whom walk through it without stopping, on their way somewhere else. The stalls face a stream of luggage wheels all day.

Around it, this stretch of Cannaregio is ordinary and residential: butchers, hardware shops, a pharmacy, and the Ponte de le Guglie a few minutes west toward the Ghetto. It is one of the few places in central Venice where the shops on a main route are aimed at people who live there.