Piazza delle Erbe

Piazza delle Erbe is the southern of the two market squares that flank the Palazzo della Ragione in the centre of Padua, and it has been a working produce market for the better part of eight hundred years. The name means "square of the herbs"; vegetables and greens are still what it sells each morning, and the same stones fill with students and spritz glasses each evening.

This is a working market serving people who live here, not a display. Buying something -- fruit, cheese, bread from Sotto il Salone -- is both easy and the difference between participating and spectating.

Stalls and the arcade shops are people's businesses and their operators are working. Photographing produce displays at close range without a word is the common complaint; asking first is usually met with amusement rather than refusal.

In the evening the square is loud and residential at the same time -- flats sit directly above the bars. The noise is tolerated because it is local; visitors adding to it late at night are less so.

Padua absorbs visitors far more comfortably than Venice does, and spending an evening here rather than day-tripping back is genuinely useful to the city.

The square is public and open at all hours, with no admission. The produce market runs mornings, Monday to Saturday, winding down by early afternoon; Sotto il Salone's shops keep ordinary retail hours. It sits at the centre of Padua's ZTL, so arrival is on foot -- about fifteen minutes from the railway station.