Capo Mercarto is an ancient and well-known district. - Palermo Italy - ECTV

Il Capo is an ancient and well-known district of the historic center of Palermo; With the same term the Palermitans also indicate indifferently the market that is held there and with which the neighborhood is identified.

The Capo market, together with the other markets of Palermo such as Ballarò, La Vucciria, Lattarini and the Flea Market, is an important point of agri-food retail sales. It is a very lively and characteristic food market: the colors, the screams (the vuci) of the sellers, the animation of the stalls make it an essential element of the character of the city of Palermo. It is a market active every day, including Sunday morning, giving the opportunity to buy at a good price both food and other merchandise: fruit, vegetables, spices, meat, fish, etc., as well as taverns and meeting places. It extends along Via Carini and Via Beati Paoli, Via di Sant'Agostino and Via Cappuccinelle. The main access to the market is Porta Carini and via Carini, which leads to Piazza Capo. Traditionally, it is in the basement of this area that the Beati Paoli would have had their secret court, as also indicated in the novels of Luigi Natoli.

The area where the Capo district stands insists on the bed of the ancient river Papireto, which from the Danisinni crossed the current Piazza Peranni, Via Gioiamia, Piazza Ss. Cosma e Damiano, Piazza Monte di Pietà, Piazza S. Onofrio, Via Venezia and Piazza Caracciolo, where until the sixteenth century the coast line and the port arrived. The Papireto area until the late Middle Ages was lush, suitable for the cultivation of papyrus and sugar cane, but unhealthy due to the presence of marshy soils. It is here that, outside the ancient Punic-Roman walls, the Arabs create the "Schiavoni" district, al-Harat-as-Saqalibah, intended for Dalmatian mercenary troops. Here was built the Road of the qadi (قاضى), sari-al-qadì, the Seralcadio, which crossed the whole city for its entire length from the countryside to the sea. Even today the district is also known as Seralcaldio, one of the four districts of the ancient city. From the twelfth century numerous churches were built in the area, including Sant'Agostino and Sant'Agata alla Guilla, so called from the Arabic wadi, which indicated the bed of the river Papireto.

The upper part of the district was called Caput Seralcadi: it is from this use that the name Capo derives. Until the sixteenth century the district remains characterized by the presence of the river, and consists mainly of gardens, urban gardens, churches, craft shops, the slaughterhouse and the tannery. In 1581 the Papireto was buried about 8 meters deep, and began the reclamation of the area and the consequent urbanization. The walls were enlarged, while in 1600 the construction of Via Maqueda began, one of the two main roads of the city for the next centuries: the Cape was profoundly transformed, and became one of the four districts (Mandamenti) in which the city was divided, populated mainly by the small and middle bourgeoisie, artisans and merchants, whose houses were built next to churches and houses of brotherhoods.

Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries are built the buildings that characterize the neighborhood even today, such as the Panneria (Monte dei Pegni), the church of Sant'Onofrio, the church of San Paolino dei Guarnieri, or the current mosque, the Novitiate of the Jesuits, the church and convent of the Immaculate Conception in via Porta Carini, the church of SS. 40 Martiri Pisani, the Monastery of San Vito (now home to a police station, the College of S. Maria del Giusino, etc. The district was at the center of the riots of 1860, and the annexation to Italy, with the consequent suppression of religious orders, caused both an economic crisis, due to the end of the many economic activities linked to the convents and confraternities present here in large numbers, and the reorganization of spaces that became public (barracks, hospitals, etc.). Between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century the Cape was affected by the great urban works that changed the face of the city: the construction of the Teatro Massimo Vittorio Emanuele, the cutting of Via Roma, the construction of the Palace of Justice, affected at the end by the construction of the New Palace of Justice and the arrangement of the adjacent streets.

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