Every Sunday, there comes a moment when I look at the clock, grab my shopping bags, skip down the steps of our building…and set out for the Campagna Amica market.
I cross Via Arenula and wind through the Jewish Ghetto-passing the Fridah Kahlo store, the glistening Turtle Fountain, the Portico d’Ottavia and the Jewish Synagogue. After a few steps along the Tiber Island, I head towards Via di St. Teodoro, which borders the Palatine hill in the Campitelli neighborhood.
At the end of this quiet street, fluttering flags and a bright yellow awning come into view. This is Campagna Amica. People flow into the market, where they circle around on currents of sound and vision and fragrance and taste. They emerge laden with bags of oranges and apples, clusters of chicory and spinach, loafs of bread, cartons of eggs, rounds of cheese…bouquets of flowers.
Today is Sunday, and I have just returned from an adventure to Campagna Amica..but this time my market joy was muddled with sorrow.
Today I went to Campagna Amica for the last time.
It hardly seems real.
Campagna Amica has been one of my absolute favorite places in Rome, and it is probably the place that has made me feel most connected to Roman culture. It is colorful, boisterious and alive-a true festival of a food market. The entire space of the market glows with a golden hue, as the yellow stands and banners meet the light of the windows above.
Campagna Amica stirs to life just twice a week to celebrate sustainable agriculture, home-cooking, and the riches of the Lazio region. On one end of the market, there is a busy kitchen that churns out a several different dishes for lunch and several more food stands are arranged up in an cobblestoned courtyard attached to the market. Today I went to Campagna Amica specifically to eat lunch in this courtyard. I had the “Zuppa contadina con crostini saporiti”-a delectable “farmer’s soup” with peas, barley and lentils, olive oil and crisp bread. As I ate, I breathed in the hearty charcoal smoke of the nearby grill, and was lightly misted with rain from the clouds above.
As I made my final rounds about Campagna Amica on my final Sunday in Rome, market memories coursed endlessly through my mind. They layered over each other until I was covered in a blanket of nostalgia. I paused before piles of oranges, and remembered all of the times that I had peeled away the thick skin of these oranges to reveal a blood-red interior, glistening like rubies. I spied the stand that sells Lazio wine for two euros, and I smiled at the woman who has sold me a bottle of olive oil every few weeks for the past three months. I passed one familiar produce stand and could see myself buying artichokes, lemon and ridiculous quantities of fresh mint to make Carciofi alla Romana with Oliver. A few steps further and I was in front of the seafood stand where Carla bought two silver fish to stuff with garlic and herbs and bake to bronze perfection for our last apartment dinner.
I’ve could track the passage of my time abroad through the shifting produce of Campagna Amica. When we first discovered Campagna Amica, the market was bursting with artichokes. They were beautiful and geometric, and everywhere we looked-like fields of green and purple stars. When the artichokes subsided, they were replaced by fava beans in long green pods. Shoppers and vendors walked around splitting the pods open, and plucking the raw beans from the soft interior. The next seasonal star was asparagus, and a week later the market was flooded by some cherished variety of small red apples.
Today I went to the market, and found it full of glossy red cherries. So the last thing I did at Campanga Amica was purchase a cup of them, which I sampled on my way home.
They’re the best cherries I’ve ever tasted. And the perfect way to sweeten the bitter sadness of leaving the most wonderful market in the world.
Baladine Pierce