It is a time-honored tradition that markets are fortunately still alive: they are the area markets, the ones on your doorstep, on specific days of the week throughout the city.

One is spoiled for choice as to where to go. Mostly you choose the one in the area where you live. It is a place to meet and exchange, kind of like it used to be, and now, in pandemic times, it is even more so. You can buy fruits and vegetables at reasonable prices that often come from nearby, from the fields along the Navigli or from one of the many farmsteads in Lombardy, but it also allows you to have human contact with people. And that is certainly no small thing, considering the times we are living in.

The market is sounds, colors, life...told by those who, every week show up with their stall always at the same place. They are Italians and others, mostly adopted Milanese because Milan, you know, is a welcoming multiethnic city.
The soul of the market is being a place for meeting and socializing, where human relationships count almost more than the goods on display; it is an opportunity for intercultural exchange between places, Italian and non-Italian, different and distant cultures and at the same time a space for knowledge and traditions to be spread and preserved in a valuable way.

Making markets takes passion and hard work, getting up very early in the morning and always being outdoors, in the heat, the cold or in the pouring rain.
That of markets is a reality that needs to be safeguarded and allows, many times, to find special items that cannot be found elsewhere. Even fruits and vegetables have different, better flavors. Only at the market, through the sale of some particular objects, are ancient traditions rediscovered that are today unknown to young people.

There are many markets in Milan, mostly fruit and vegetable markets, which take place in the open air every week but there is also a wide choice of specific markets such asantiques, clothes and shoes, second-hand and vintage. Or, there are markets that are a bit more special such as the one for stamp enthusiasts and collectors(Mercatino Filatelico) that takes place every Sunday morning, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the center, metro stop red line Cordusio and the Palazzo della Borsa, precisely in Via Armorari.
Another really interesting and unique market takes place every second Sunday of the month, from September to July, with the old books in the square: the antique, unobtainable and collectible book: in the center, near the Duomo, under the arcades of Piazza Diaz more than 100 exhibitors make this market exhibition one of the largest in Europe.
You are spoiled for choice and all you need is a little time on your hands.
Attached you can find a list of the markets held daily in Milan divided by neighborhood and a list of the most visited ones.

To know a place, where you live or visit, you have to live it and be in contact with the people. If you want to know more about Milan, in its most unique and unusual aspects, also go to the market....

(Ph Ig: @barbara.troilo)