Radio Mercato Centrale: Sound Design Transforms Florence Market

A new sound project by DJ and sound designer Alessio Bertallot, together with Giacomo De Poli and Livio Magnini, has been launched at Mercato Centrale in Florence. Starting in July, the market's first floor becomes a creative stage enhancing gastronomic excellence and sociality through art and music. Bertallot curated a unique repertoire of Italian music spanning popular, historical, and contemporary genres. The key innovation is the use of "slow music," inserting pauses of silence between tracks to let the social noise of the market reemerge. Officially presented on July 5, the project extends beyond the market walls via Radio Mercato Centrale, a station broadcasting live from 10 AM to midnight, alternating music with live market sounds. During pauses, fragments of voices from 20th-century Italian intellectuals, artists, and cultural figures emerge. A video by Alessio Lavecchi for Artribune Television features general director Domenico Montano and project creator Alessio Bertallot, along with special guests Mogol, Ron, and Ghemon who inaugurated the initiative on July 5.