Ballarò is a well-known historical market in Palermo, along with others called Vucciria, Il Capo, Lattarini and the Flea Market. The permanent market extends from Piazza Casa Professa to the ramparts of Corso Tukory towards Porta Sant'Agata. The market is famous for selling the first fruits that come from the countryside of Palermo. Ballarò is the oldest of the city's markets, frequented by hundreds of people every day, animated by the so-called abbanniate, that is, by the noisy calls of sellers who, with their characteristic and colorful local accent, try to attract the interest of passers-by. It looks like a mass of crowded stalls and with the road invaded by wooden boxes that contain the merchandise that is continually shouted, abbanniated, chanted to advertise the good quality and the good price of the products. Ballarò is a mainly food market, used above all for the sale of fruit, vegetables, vegetables, meat and fish, but there are also items for domestic use in the kitchen and cleaning of the house, as in the markets of the Cape and Vucciria. Within the market, greengrocers sell cooked foods and street foods, typical of Palermo's cuisine, such as boiled or baked onions, panelle (chickpea flour fritters), crocchè or cazzilli (potato croquettes), boiled vegetables, octopus, quarume (calf innards), sandwich with meusa (spleen). Heart of the Albergheria district, the Ballarò market is so called from Bahlara, a village near Monreale where the Arab merchants came from, or from "Vallaraya", name of an Indian king of the Deccan region. According to others the name Ballarò is of German origin, Ferdinand Ballaro 'was the captain of King Ferdinand of Aragon in Palermo in 1400; it is also said that the market is called Ballaro 'because the Ballaro family collected on behalf of the King of Spain a percentage of sales of food products for sale at the Ballaro market'. Or even that, in relation to the etymology of the name of this typically Arab market, Ballarò derives from Souk el Ballarak, the Arabic mirror market.

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