Mercato Settimanale di Lerici
Every Saturday morning Piazza Garibaldi and the surrounding lanes fill with stalls run by the same farming families who have been supplying Lerici's kitchens for generations. This is where you buy the focaccia ingredients, not where you eat the tourist version of them.
What you'll find
The market runs from roughly 08:00 to 13:00 and covers fresh vegetables from the Magra valley, Ligurian olive oil sold straight from unlabelled cans, bunches of fresh basil so fragrant they scent half the piazza, and jars of pesto made to recipes that predate any supermarket brand by a century.
Look for the stall selling farinata — the thick chickpea-flour flatbread baked in a wood-fired copper pan — which is typically served warm by 09:30 and gone by 10:30. A wedge costs around €1.50 and eating it standing up in the piazza is entirely correct behaviour.
Picking up the best souvenirs
Bottles of local Colli di Luni DOC white wine, produced just inland around Sarzana and Ortonovo, appear at several stalls at prices that would embarrass any wine shop. The Vermentino and Pigato grapes thrive in this microclimate and the resulting wines pair perfectly with the gulf's seafood.
Ligurian pine nut honey and dried porcini from the Apennine foothills behind the coast are both compact, genuinely local gifts that survive the journey home. Vendors are generally happy to let you taste before you buy — just ask politely.
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