Over the many years of planning custom Italy itineraries for clients, we’ve realized that travelers often have misconceptions about shopping Italy street markets. Many imagine a souk-like maze of stands that sell a bit of everything for one-stop art, clothing, souvenir, and food shopping…and all of it produced locally. Most Italian markets, however, are rather small and focused on one or two specific types of goods, often of dubious quality. 

A recent client wanted to allocate four hours in her itinerary one afternoon to “do some street market shopping” and sent along a list of items she wanted to purchase that included shoes, belts, glass, ceramics, souvenirs, t-shirts, watercolor paintings of main sights, scarves, and postcards.