Mercado Tirso de Molina

This guide to Mercado Tirso de Molina in Santiago opens with a 2014 shutdown notice pasted on a padlocked stall, one of twenty the Recoleta municipality closed in a single sweep, and the dispute between the mayor's office and vendors over what the closures really meant. It reaches back to the 1950s street sellers who pushed handcarts around an old streetcar terminal on the Mapocho's north bank, and the 1970s decision to herd them into one official market named for a Spanish Baroque playwright. Head toward the entrance on Artesanos street and look up at the inverted pyramid skylights overhead.