Santa Chiara Market

Santa Chiara Market in Vasto is built over the ruins of the ancient Santa Chiara Cloister, a fitting location, when you consider that the shopping there was done with a reverence bordering on the religious. The seafood came from nets that were hauled up from the nearby Adriatic a few hours before, fruit and vegetables came fresh from the fields and orchards that surround the town, wine and olive oil came from local vineyards and groves, and the cheese and meats that hung in the stalls were locally cured and butchered.

The market embodies every foreigner’s idea of how Italians shop for food. When I went through it for the first time, I got lost in the fragrances and colors of the summer’s fruits and vegetables, heaped up in piles in every stall. The colors were intensive – bright red tomatoes, dark purple eggplants, gleaming black olives, yellow pumpkin flowers, shiny green peppers, golden onions, polished apples, glossy plums and pears, furry peaches, orange hued persimmons, perfectly formed zucchinis, radishes, and lettuces. I was filled with the smells of newly baked bread, and cheese both fresh and aged from the milk of cows and sheep. There were eggs that were gathered that morning, hams, artisanal sausages and salamis of every description, meats and fowl, honey, dried spices, pasta, and grains. Every customer had their favorite stalls and every seller said that their products were the best