El Mercado has been San Antonio's marketplace since the Spanish set up a mercado here in the eighteenth century, and it remains the largest Mexican market outside Mexico itself. The Spanish established a mercado near this site in the eighteenth century as the city's official trading center, where ranchers, farmers, and artisans from across the region could sell their goods. By the 1840s, after Texas joined the United States, the market had grown into a sprawling outdoor bazaar that drew buyers from across the Southwest.
For generations, this square was where San Antonio did its grocery shopping, its haggling, its gossiping, and its celebrating. Today El Mercado covers several city blocks and is packed with shops selling hand-tooled leather goods, Talavera pottery, silver jewelry, embroidered textiles, and every manner of craft from the Mexican states. Mi Tierra restaurant, open since 1941, anchors the square with its legendary twenty-four-hour service and bakery.
During festivals like Cinco de Mayo and Día de los Muertos, thousands fill these streets. Market Square is proof that the cultural heart of a city can outlast every empire that tried to claim it.