Sardines, smoke and street treats: a feast for the senses in this fabled Italian market

Roll up for a ring-side seat to Palermo's seafood pageant.

An energetic vendor at Palermo's food and fish market. Picture by Sarah Maguire

By Sarah Maguire

May 31, 2026

Wind past stalls selling fridge magnets and ceramic busts of doubtful provenance and you emerge below bright awnings into the bustling food-and-fish market along Palermo's narrow Via Porta Carini.

A market since the 9th century, tourists are easily wooed to take a ring-side seat at simple wooden tables for lunch and a show.

The pageant includes energetic vendors (pictured) selling the sea's riches - amberjacks and cuttlefish, calamari, squid and prawns - cooked and colourful, piled high on their street-side stalls.

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The faint-hearted can squirm as smoke from a nearby grill clears, revealing a knobbly terrain of lamb intestines threaded on to skewers for the Palermitan treat of stigghiola.

The platter that arrives at our table is also full of local treats - an eggplant involtini; a shoal of sardines and calamari and other grilled seafood delights.

And the real treat? A sunny day. A glass of wine. A moment of stillness amid the kaleidoscope of this fabled market.

Words bySarah Maguire

Sarah is Travel Editor for ACM. She has edited leading travel liftouts and magazines in Australia for the best part of 20 years, and is amazed at how the exhilaration of going travelling never fades.

My all-time favourite destination is … Italy. A three-week family holiday, from Rome to Venice via Tuscany and the Cinque Terre, was a pinch-ourselves dream come true, every single day.

Next on my bucket list is … South America - in particular Argentina, Peru and Colombia. I’d love to explore them all, the capital cities and beyond.

My top travel tip is … Make regular plans to travel and have adventures - however near or far from home - with the people you love most.