We’d found this market during one of our daytime meanderings. It was bustling, full of activities like the one guy who was cleaning the night’s catch of sardines or the other guy who’d set up a kitchen beside an arcade and was frying up plates of fish or the people using the public fountain to wash dishes or the people enjoying lunch.

But then we heard the place takes on a whole new feel after dark – it was described to us “as like a disco” – so of course, on our last night in Palermo, we had to go see. It was different. It was a lot different. The fish cleaners and fish fryers were gone. No one was doing the dishes. And of course it was too late for lunch. But there were even more people than we’d seen in the daytime. There was a little place selling aperol spritzes. There were tiny cafes all over the place. There were diners. There were pedestrians. (There were four American photographers.) There were motorbikes threading their way through it all.

It was hard to leave.

La Vucciria Market
Palermo, Sicily
photographed 8.31.2022