Antiques and Things from Other Times Market Exhibition

Detail stall of old characters

Trade, culture and memories

This market exhibition is a commercial and cultural event. Visitors form a whole with the City that brings relationships, stories and memories to life. There is a hustle and bustle, along the downtown streets that slow down to the usual traffic, in what becomes a large and attractive pedestrian area. This event lives on by bringing back "old treasures." Today the words "Piazzola sul Brenta" and "Mercatino dell'Antiquariato" have become one and the same: an identification that can be found both nationally and internationally.

Fromthe moment the sun rises, the setting up of the exhibition spaces begins. The awakening of the City, at the first light of dawn, resounds with the voices and rhythms typical of city markets, in an evocative architectural setting, combining the majestic seventeenth-century Piazzola Palace and the Palladian loggia with the now redeveloped twentieth-century area of the former jute processing plant.

View of the Mercatino from the top of the Loggia in Paolo Camerini Square.

The history of this Market Show is intertwined with the birth of the Pro Loco Piazzola. We are in the late 1970s. In continuity with a climate of national ferment, in a Northeast that was opening up to the birth of small and medium-sized businesses, initiatives to break out of a certain "local immobilism" were also starting here. Among the volunteers of the "Pro Piazzola" the idea of the "Mercatino" was born, as Asolo and others had already done. The location is suggestive and word of mouth works. Over time the event grows: the number of exhibitors increases and it goes from the initial space covered by the loggia of Piazza Camerini to a real invasion of objects and furnishings throughout the historic center.

Detail of a stall selling old maps

The best bargains

In the early hours of MercatinoSundays, the best bargains are concluded; in such a varied "tale of the square" rare items sometimes emerge. From the earliest years, documents related to the history of the City of Piazzola are found: original prints of "The Pleasure Clock," the book that recounts the three days of festivities and "special effects" with which the Duke of Brunswick was welcomed by Marco Contarini in 1685, resurface. In 2003, the Japanese newspaper "Yomiuri Shinbun" devoted an insert to the event. A copy of this interview is currently on display at the Pro Loco headquarters.