Martina Franca Antique Market

There are many antique markets throughout Southern Italy, many cities will have markets on different weekends and you can travel around to each of them.  I visited my first antique market this weekend in Martina Franca, about a 30 minute drive north of Grottaglie.

 This market was full of a bunch of random stuff, from books, paintings, ceramics, household items and any number of other stuff.

 Large glass bottles are popular around here, these were originally used for making wine but now make good coin jars.  These go from 10 to 30 euros depending on how clean they are.

 I was hoping to find some old lenses but this market was not great for that kind of stuff.  They also had a bunch of old phonographs, I thought about getting one and seeing if I could retrofit it for amplification of an iPod

 Market was really busy.

 When I first saw this I assumed Mercedes at one time made typewriters... I was wrong about that, here is a link to the Mercedes typewriter story.  This typewriter is from the early 1930's.

 Market had many nice mirrors.

 And religious statues.

 If you ever wondered what an Italian Cowboy might look like, he would probably look like this guy.

 Not far from the market is central Martina Franca, today the central area had a Christmas Market.  But compared to Germany, I don't think you would plan on visiting southern Italy with the sole purpose of checking out a christmas market.

 The white christmas tree is made from toilet bowl cleaners.  Very clever.

 The main square of Martia Franca is beautiful, it was very busy Sunday early afternoon.

 Fountains are still on.

 Across the street from this shop is a leather shop that sells custom made cowboy clothing and bags.

 Through out the afternoon different bands were playing jazz and Christmas music.  The funny things was all the Christmas songs were sung in English.

 Around 12:30pm we went for lunch and exited lunch at 2:00pm.  At this time all the crowds were gone for siesta.  It's so weird, I can't figure out where the 1000's of people went.

 Event the Christmas market shutdown.