Little Italy Layover, San Diego: The Mercato
Part of the full San Diego Layover: The Embarcadero From SAN
San Diego’s Little Italy runs north from the downtown train station along India Street, and the point of a few hours here is the cobbled piazzas, the run of restaurants around them and a 1925 parish church painted floor to ceiling.
Piazza della Famiglia and the smaller piazzas off India Street
Ten thousand square feet of cobblestone opened in March 2018 across West Date Street between India and Columbia, closing it to traffic and giving the district a proper square: a tiled fountain at the east end, café tables under umbrellas across the middle, and a view down the slope to San Diego Bay. Two smaller piazzas sit off India Street a few blocks either side of it, with fountains and tables of their own, and between them they are why the neighborhood feels like somewhere to sit rather than somewhere to pass through.
The district is flat and it backs onto the waterfront path, which makes it a reasonable place to pick up wheels rather than walk: electric bike rental gets you from here down the Embarcadero and back well inside a couple of hours.
The Saturday Mercato fills six blocks of West Date Street
Six blocks of West Date Street, from west of Kettner Boulevard out to Front Street, close every Saturday from 8am to 2pm for the largest farmers market in San Diego County: about a hundred stalls of California produce, fish, bread, oil, eggs and cooked food, running year round in any weather. A smaller version takes the same street midweek.
It is shoulder to shoulder down the middle of the road for those six hours, and the gaps between the stall lines are narrow enough that a wheeled suitcase stops being something you steer and starts being something everyone else has to walk around.
The painted walls and ceiling of Our Lady of the Rosary
The parish dedicated its church on State Street in November 1925 and then brought Fausto Tasca over from Venice to decorate it. He painted the sanctuary walls and the ceiling, put the Crucifixion above the altar and the Last Judgment overhead, worked the Twelve Apostles along the sides, and designed the stained glass to match, finishing the whole scheme in 1926.
A $2.5 million restoration remastered the original paintwork ahead of the church’s centenary in 2025, so what is on the walls now is close to what the parish saw when it was new. It is a working parish rather than a ticketed sight, at 1668 State Street, two minutes from the piazza.
If the hours here stretch further than the district can fill, everything else downtown is within a fifteen-minute walk or one stop on the trolley, and tours and tickets elsewhere in the city are easier to sort out before you set off than on the day.
A bus covers the three miles from Broadway to the terminals
MTS Route 992 runs from Broadway, alongside Santa Fe Depot at the bottom of the district, out to both terminals at San Diego International Airport in about fifteen minutes, for a flat $2.50, every fifteen minutes from 4:15am to midnight. Walking down from the piazza to the stop takes about five minutes on level pavement.
Allow 45 minutes door to door rather than fifteen, once the wait and the terminal walk are counted. For the version of this day that stays on the water instead of the table, the main San Diego layover guide works south along the Embarcadero from the same train station.
Frequently asked questions
What should I do during a layover near Little Italy in San Diego?
Eat, then walk it off. The district runs north from the train station along India Street, and Piazza della Famiglia on West Date Street is where most people end up: 10,000 square feet of cobbles, a tiled fountain and tables outside a run of restaurants. Our Lady of the Rosary on State Street is two minutes away and its walls and ceiling are painted end to end. Two hours is enough unless it is a Saturday, in which case the farmers market takes over six blocks from 8am and you will want three.
What day is the Little Italy farmers market?
Saturday is the big one, 8am to 2pm year round, rain or shine, running six blocks along West Date Street from west of Kettner Boulevard to Front Street. It is the largest farmers market in San Diego County, with around a hundred stalls of produce, fish, bread, oil and prepared food. A smaller market also runs midweek on the same street. On any other day the piazza is open and quiet and the restaurants around it are the draw instead.
How far is Little Italy from Santa Fe Depot?
About five minutes on foot. The station sits at the south end of the district on Kettner Boulevard, and India Street, the main run of restaurants, starts a couple of blocks north of it. The whole walk is flat. There is also a trolley stop on the district's own edge, though for that distance it is rarely worth waiting for one.
Can I get into Our Lady of the Rosary church to see the paintings?
It is a working parish church at 1668 State Street rather than a ticketed sight, so access depends on what is on. Fausto Tasca, brought from Venice, painted the sanctuary walls and ceiling and designed the stained glass, finishing in 1926, and the whole scheme came through a $2.5 million restoration before the church's centenary in 2025. Check the parish's own Mass times if you want to be sure the doors are open.