Mercado Central modernist market hall
— iron, tile, and the smell of oranges.
Not only on a wall.
Mercado Central modernist market hall, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“Valencia's Mercado Central, built between 1914 and 1928 in the city's modernist Valencian style. Iron and glass under a low central dome, ceramic tile on every surface that holds it, a weather-vane parrot on the roof. Around three hundred stalls inside: citrus, jamón, horchata, paella rice, the Mediterranean catch. Open every morning except Sunday.
The place, in three passes.
The Mercado Central occupies a single block in Valencia's Ciutat Vella, directly opposite the 15th-century Llotja de la Seda silk exchange, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996, and the Iglesia de los Santos Juanes. Designed by Alejandro Soler March and Francisco Guardia Vial, both graduates of the Barcelona school of Lluís Domènech i Montaner, construction ran from 1914 and the market opened on 23 March 1928. The hall covers about 8,000 square metres of stalls under two glass-and-iron domes, with a separate fish hall at one end.
The two domes flood the hall with daytime light through coloured glass — yellows, blues, and ceramic-tile reds set into the iron ribs. Tiled scenes of Valencian fruits and fish run along the cornices, the work of local ceramicists in the modernist Valencian idiom. A weather vane in the form of a parrot, the cotorra, sits on the central cupola, named for the chatter of the market floor. Most photographers come in the first hour after the gates open, around 7:30 in the morning.
The market opens Monday through Saturday from around 7:30am to 3pm and closes on Sunday. Around three hundred stalls work the floor: citrus and stone fruit from the Valencian huerta, Iberian ham, fresh seafood from the Mediterranean, bomba rice for paella, and almonds and horchata from Alboraia. The closest metro stops are Xàtiva and Àngel Guimerà; on foot, the hall sits two minutes from the Plaza del Mercado and the Llotja de la Seda. Best visited mid-morning on a weekday.
