Heritage and Perceptions of Ethnicity in an ‘Italian’ Market: The Case of San Lorenzo

Abstract

Florence, Italy, the ‘City of Art’, is also a city of merchants. In the San Lorenzo neighbourhood, approximately 300 outdoor stands surround a nineteenth-century market building with space for 200 businesses. Commerce is constant but how it is conducted, and by whom, is changing. On the one hand, immigrant vendors are rapidly replacing Italian ones. On the other, growing numbers of vendors are relying more heavily on international tourists to support the marketplace economy. These changes figure in local debates about how to preserve marketplace heritage. The paper examines how heritage claims in San Lorenzo are expressed, influenced, and negotiated by different stakeholders who earn a living or shop there. To that end, it considers the consequences of tourists' attitudes towards merchants' ethnicity. The paper reveals that tourism has added another level of complexity to how the marketplace functions as an arena for heritage preservation as well as one of economic competition.

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