We have a Market Square! The renovated and modernized Vila Nova de Famalicão Market Square will open its doors to the public on April 25th at 9am. The inauguration protocol session, attended by the Mayor, Paulo Cunha, the President of CCDR-N, António Cunha and the Archbishop Primaz of Braga, D. Jorge Ortiga, among other entities, is scheduled for 15h00 and will be broadcast live on the official Facebook pages of the Municipality of Famalicão and the the Square - Municipal Market.
During the first day of its life, the Square - Municipal Market will be open to the public until 5pm, with the Permanent Market, Cyclic Market, Catering Zone and outside shops already operating. The access to the space will be conditioned according to the pandemic situation, with a limitation of one hundred people. The use of mask, social distancing and hand disinfection is mandatory.
Sixty-nine years after its inauguration, the Municipal Market is reborn with the name that famalicenses have called it over the decades - the Square, but more modern, more attractive, more functional, enhancing new experiences to its users. It will be a space for new cultural and urban experiences, based on a healthier lifestyle and with more quality, in a harmonic crossing between tradition, modernity and innovation.
The Catering Zone, with covered and open-air terraces has seven restaurants. The fresh produce area for butchers, fishmongers, fruit and flowers has 6 fishmongers, 2 butchers, 6 fruit and vegetable stalls, 3 florists and 2 cheese dairy/charcuterie spaces.
The Farmers' Market, which is reserved for the direct and occasional sale of agricultural, agro-food and livestock products by local producers, will have the rotating presence of nearly four dozen traders. In the street shops, there are more than a dozen varied businesses, such as clothes arrangements; haberdashery; drugstore; barbershop; goldsmith shop; laundrette; bakery, restaurant and snack bar café. An experimental kitchen space for the promotion of workshops, tastings, showcooking and gardened spaces for relaxing and breathing, complete the noble areas of this true famalicense civic space.
The Square - Municipal Market of Famalicão "is much more than a place, it's a dynamic, a way of producing and consuming", says the Mayor, Paulo Cunha, underlining that the market's doors "go far beyond the territorial limits". "The Square will be the anchor space of a new strategy of promotion, enhancement and dissemination of all local producers from Famalicão, which transcends the physical borders of the market," explains the mayor.
With a total cost of four million euros, the intervention had funds approved under the Strategic Plan for Urban Development (PEDU), signed between the municipality and the Operational Programme North 2020, which guaranteed ERDF co-financing of 3.1 million euros.