Mercato del Carmine

This guide to Mercato del Carmine in Lucca asks why anyone would tear down a six-hundred-year-old church, one that had grown on this spot since around the year one thousand and held a panel by Perugino and a canvas by Vasari, to make room for a market. It follows the Carmelite friars who expanded it through the thirteen forties and again in the fourteen sixties, and the city's nineteen thirty-two decision to move the produce market indoors. You'll hear what became of those paintings once the naves came down, and how many stalls filled the space by nineteen thirty-six. Look up at the squat tower over the entrance, once the church's bell tower, now just a clock.