Market hall

{{Short description|Covered space used as a marketplace}}

{{About|contemporary market halls|historical market halls|Market house|other uses|Market hall (disambiguation)}}

File:Östermalms saluhall 1.jpgs Saluhall, Stockholm, Sweden]]

File:Kuopio Market Hall - interior.jpg, Kuopio, Finland]]

A market hall is a covered space or a building where food and other articles are sold from stalls by independent vendors. A market hall is a type of indoor market and can be found in many European countries. The most common variation of a market hall is a food hall, an area of a department store where food is sold.[https://web.archive.org/web/20140814074430/http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/english/food-hall "Food hall", Oxford Dictionaries]

Market halls and food halls can also be unconnected to department stores and operate independently, often in a separate building. A modern market hall may also exist in the form of what is nominally a gourmet food hall or a public market, for example in Stockholm's Östermalm Saluhall[https://books.google.com/books?id=dvawyDSmxzkC&pg=PA77 Time Out Stockholm, p.77] or Mexico City's Mercado Roma.

Unlike shopping mall food courts made up of fast food chains,[https://web.archive.org/web/20140814074318/http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/english/food-court?q=food+court "Food court", Oxford Dictionaries] food halls typically mix local artisan restaurants, butcher shops and other food-oriented boutiques under one roof.{{cite news |title=The Food Court Matures Into the Food Hall |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/12/business/food-hall-development.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 |newspaper=New York Times |date=September 12, 2017 }} The term food hall in the British sense, meaning an equivalent of a market hall, is increasingly used in the United States. In some Asia-Pacific countries, a food hall is equivalent to a North American food court, or the terms are used interchangeably.{{Cn|date=February 2021}}