Sardinia's land of milk and honey: the Mercato di San Benedetto
What passionate holidaymaker to Italy is not familiar with the depressing feeling that sets in when you enter a British supermarket for the first time after a holiday in your favourite country? Everything is packaged in sterile packaging, fruit and vegetables mostly come from far away, and the fish counter, if there is one, offers defrosted products and the cheese counter offers pasteurised products. By now, at the latest, the grey everyday life has returned and you try not to think about it, that beautiful market at your holiday destination, a symphony of colours, shapes and enticing scents, the fresh locally grown fruit, the shepherd's cheese, the freshly caught fish...
Yes, Italy's markets are world-famous, and rightly so. But who would have guessed that the most spectacular Italian market is not located in Milan, Rome, Naples or Palermo, but in the comparatively small Sardinian capital of Cagliari? Covering an area of 8,000 square metres spread over two floors, the Mercato di San Benedetto, inaugurated on 1 June 1952, is not only the largest municipal market hall in Italy, but also the most important in Europe. This is not necessarily apparent from the outside. The sober, functional building in the style of the 1950s gives no hint of the almost baroque abundance that awaits you inside.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Vertumnus, Public Domain
But when you enter the pleasantly cool halls in summer, you hardly know where to look first. The tables of the 68 fruit and vegetable vendors are literally bending under the artfully piled seasonal fruits, freshly harvested in Ilisu, Sestu and Oristano. (If you visit the market at the end of June, be sure to look out for the delicious Camusina pears, a genuine Sardinian pear variety.) No fewer than 58 butchers offer freshly slaughtered meat; they all specialise in specific types of meat, be it beef, pork, horse, poultry or offal. At the cheese stands, you can purchase specialities that Sardinian shepherds and cheese makers are rightly proud of. Of course, bakers are also represented in the hall, where you can buy, among other things, the Sardinian shepherd's bread, Pane Carasau, which I have already described elsewhere.
But the biggest sensation at the Mercato di Benedetto is located in the basement. Here, 75 stalls offer exclusively fish, covering the same area as the upper floor. And what fish! Mullet, red mullet, bream, sea bass, oysters from Ogliastra, the famous mussels from Olbia and Oristano, trout from the south and salmon from the north of the island. And, of course, there is also the famous Sardinian speciality bottarga (I mentioned it here), the salted and dried roe of the mullet, which transforms simple pasta into an incomparable delicacy. Lucky are those who have rented a holiday apartment and can stock up on ingredients for a sumptuous dinner at the market – at incredibly low prices, by the way! But whether you're staying in a house or a hotel, after a tour of this fish paradise, everyone is sure to have worked up an appetite. How fortunate that for some time now there have been a few stalls selling delicious fritto misto – mixed fried seafood – to eat on the go. And once you've tasted this delicacy, Germania and its supermarkets will be a distant memory.
With a Sardinian ‘Adiosu’, I bid you farewell for today.
Yours, Joachim Waßmann
P.S.: The Mercato di San Benedetto is located at Via Francesco Cocco Ortu 46 and is open Monday to Friday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Saturdays until 3 p.m. If you want to buy the best fish or just admire it, you should be there as early as possible.
(Featured image: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Still Life with Fruit, c. 1603. Public Domain.)