An experience you shouldn’t miss during a long stay to try your hand at local cuisine, or a stop "hit and run" if you want to bring a piece of Lucca back home from a shopping day at the farmer's market in Piazza San Francesco, a quiet and reserved place of the city just a stone's throw from the characteristic via del fosso, the park of Villa Bottini and the Botanical Garden and the Lu.CCA contemporary art center.
The market of twelve young producers is part of the "shopping in the countryside" program of the Italian General Confederation of Agriculture and Slow Food Markets of the area which periodically organizes meetings on the theme of "good, pure and fair" food. A small market, where, however, you will find everything you need.
Seasonal products, biodiversity and many good tips about Lucca's local cuisine are provided directly by the producers and the inhabitants of Lucca who use to meet here, to exchange some recipes and find out what the season will bring in a lively and "tasty" atmosphere.
In the shopping bag you can put the best seasonal products like cardoons, turnips, pumpkins and courgettes, and also Slow Food certified products, such as Canestrino tomatoes and red beans of Lucca, extra virgin olive oil, fresh fruit, sheep, cow and goatcheese with raw milk, cold cuts and fresh Cinta Senese pork, different flour types, bread and baked goods, wine from the Lucca hills and honey. All strictly organic.
Sweetened olives as exceptional product to prepare stewed chicken and rabbit, tea grown in the Mount Pisano region for your teatime, fresh and roasted peanuts directly from the fields of Massaciuccoli, May cherries, the inimitable porchetta for a local-style snack, Genny's fresh eggs, artichoke bitters and, if you're lucky, a few sumptuous bunches of camellia in full bloom.
Where: Piazza San Francesco
When: every Wednesday
in summer from 4:00 pm to 8:00 pm;
in winter from 2.30 pm to 6.30 pm
FB / MercoledìBio
The market is located in the ZTL traffic-restricted zone, but it is possible to park nearby.
The nearest is the Mazzini parking in via dei Bacchettoni.