Markets & Shopping in the Balkans

About Markets & Shopping in the Balkans

By the ULTIMATE Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

The pijaca, or pazar, is where you really meet a Balkan city. This is our guide to the region’s green markets and old bazaars, and the best things to bring home.

A town within a town

If the café is the city’s living room, the open-air market, the pijaca or pazar, is its kitchen garden. Long before “farm to table” became a slogan, Balkan cities were fed by smallholders who came in at dawn from the villages. They still do. Tables bow under seasonal abundance: peppers in late summer, wild mushrooms and forest honey in autumn, home-cured ham, jars of ajvar, and blocks of white cheese kept in brine.

The real pleasure is the people. The woman who insists her tomatoes are the best in the market (and is probably right); the cheese seller who cuts you a taste before you’ve asked; the regulars greeted by name; the gentle bargaining that is as much about friendship as price. Visit Kalenić in Belgrade, Ljubljana’s Central Market under Plečnik’s colonnades, Split’s green market by the palace walls or Skopje’s Bit Pazar, and you’ll understand a city faster than any museum could teach you.

The real pleasure is the people.

The old bazaars

In the south and east, the Ottoman bazaar is a market of another kind: lanes of low shops where coppersmiths, goldsmiths, grills and cafés sit side by side. In Sarajevo’s Baščaršija the coppersmiths still hammer out džezvas and coffee sets, and Skopje’s Old Bazaar, on the north bank of the Vardar, has five centuries of trade behind it, with caravanserais, hammams, mosques and churches among the shops.

Some markets are landmarks in their own right. Zagreb’s Dolac has been the city’s pantry since 1930, on a terrace above Ban Jelačić Square; Belgrade’s best-loved green market is Kalenić, in Vračar; and Tirana’s New Bazaar, first built in 1931 and renovated in 2017, sells fruit, cheese, olives, honey, mountain tea and raki under covered halls, surrounded by brightly painted buildings.

What to take home

The best souvenirs are the ones people here buy for themselves: a jar of homemade ajvar; Njeguši ham and cheese from the market just outside Kotor’s old town walls; dark pumpkin-seed oil, Tolminc cheese and honey from the Carniolan bee at Ljubljana’s Central Market; or a copper coffee set from the bazaar in Sarajevo, so you can make Bosnian coffee at home.

Zagreb has its own: the licitar heart, the painted gingerbread now on UNESCO’s list, and the red umbrella of Šestine. In Skopje’s Old Bazaar, look for silver filigree spun like lace and Ohrid pearls; in Tirana, take home mountain tea and honey from the New Bazaar.

How to shop the market

Go early, when the farmers are still setting out their tables and the best produce has not yet gone. Saturday mornings are usually the busiest and the most fun. Carry some cash in small notes, taste before you buy, and if you don’t share a language, a smile and a pointed finger work everywhere.

Where to go next

Every market below is in one of our Balkan guides, with its opening days and what to look for.

Our advice

Our advice: make the market your first stop in a new city, not your last. Have a coffee nearby, watch the regulars, then buy lunch from the stalls: it is the quickest way to feel at home.

Festival dates, opening times and seasonal services change, so please check with each place directly.