There’s nothing like Ninth Street in Philadelphia. Stepping on the iconic stretch between Fitzwater and Wharton streets, you can certainly feel the history, grit and authenticity of our city. But how well do you really know it?
Our Market Tours, now in its second year, is back in full swing – educating tourists and locals about the tradition of the Italian Market… Or, well, the “Italianish” Market.
The guided tours are part of the bigger “Our Market” project, which began in 2019 celebrating the rich and mixed immigrant history of the street. From the mind of local artist Michelle Angela Ortiz, the project revitalizes spaces on Ninth Street that need upkeep, like awnings or produce stands, but with added artistic flourishes that celebrate the personal legacies behind each business.
Stops on the tour involve large, colorful murals and light boxes with designs that celebrate the history of stores in the market. In explaining the artwork from the Our Market project, the tour guides are also telling the stories of individuals and celebrating the legacy of Ninth Street.

“My mother worked in the market for 25 years,” said Ortiz, who gave Billy Penn an abridged version of the tour. “My point of connection here to the market starts with my mother. She’s been here in this community for 55 years, and so she left her small town in Colombia and immigrated toward the small town of what we know as the market.”
For Ortiz, the tours and artwork they highlight are a love letter to her community. The proceeds from the tour are reinvested into the mission to help sustain and strengthen Ninth Street.
“A lot of the stories that we’ve collected and have, people have shared in our gatherings of their connection to the market,” she said. “So I come from that experience. I still live in the neighborhood … I grew up here. I’m raising my son here.”
Walking Ninth Street
Philly is a big city, but it can also be a small town. Following Ortiz down Ninth Street felt a bit like hanging with a local celebrity. Every half-block she found a familiar face, ready to strike up conversation. At times, we had to duck and weave just to complete the tour on time.
We began with colorful murals of community heroes: two prominent portraits depict brothers Danny and Joe Di Bruno, founders of their iconic namesake store, and Elizabeth “Betty Ann” Mongelluzzo, a beloved shop owner and florist known for her giving spirit, who passed away in 2019. A third mural, located outside his shop, features Carl Redel — a Polish immigrant, Holocaust survivor and founder of the beloved Carl’s Farm Eggs.
Ortiz painted the portraits in the mural, with the artistic frames from artist Emil Busch. According to Ortiz, just having the artwork in the market has helped unlock new stories about the people they depict.

“That was the great thing about painting their portraits,” she said. “Having people have the actual images spark these stories and memories. So people start sharing the stories together here in this space.”
One of those people is Lisa Coyle, a former colleague and “cousin-in-law” of Mongelluzzo.
Coyle works at the visitor center right next to the portrait of “Aunt Betty Ann.” She joined us to share some memories of “Aunt Bet.”
“When I sit out here and have my coffee, I actually talk to her,” Coyle said. “Because I’m waiting for her snotty response to come back. I just love the fact that she’s just still here … She helped everyone. Betty Ann was the market. She did everything for everybody, and she never asked for anything in return. That’s Betty Ann,” she said proudly, looking at the mural. “That’s Aunt Bet.”
“A market of immigrants”
The tours, Ortiz hopes, will help clear up some misconceptions about the Italian Market — starting with its name.
“We refer to the market as Ninth Street,” she said. “I’m a local, so a lot of people who are local, including Italian families, have referred to the market as Ninth Street.”
The idea is not to erase the market’s history, but to embrace its ever-evolving legacy. After all, with its melting pot of Mexican, Latin American, Jewish and Vietnamese businesses, calling the market just “Italian” is a bit of a misnomer.

“We are a market of immigrants, and we’re not challenging any of those labels,” Ortiz said. “What we basically are saying is that Ninth Street is all-encompassing.”
“When people think of what’s popularly known as the Italian Market, they think about Rocky running down the street, or good wine, good Italian food, or the festival, or the grease pole, right?” she added. “And those are all really great, great things, but we’re so much more than that.”
The street, she said, is not just a tourist destination for a photo opportunity or a place to visit, but a living, breathing community that deserves respect. Visiting and learning about Ninth Street from Our Market tours, Ortiz noted, is a way to help give back and bolster the community.
“We talk about the responsibility of being a holder of these stories,” Ortiz said. “And we are showing people how to enter into our space, in our neighborhood, with dignity and respect.”
“Soy de mujeres luchonas, trabajadoras y empoderadas”
Many city tours have a historian or scholar showing you around, spitting out facts about a topic that they know but haven’t necessarily lived. Our Market Tours really embraces the “our” in its name. Walking around with Ortiz felt like someone welcoming you into their home, and telling you the family stories, while showing off precious family heirlooms, artwork and pictures.
On our tour we met up with Alma Tlacopilco, one of Our Market’s trained guides. Tlacopilco, like Ortiz, grew up in the neighborhood, and her family also works in the market. She is headed to Temple University this fall with a full scholarship and a plan to study law.

“I believe it’s important to support the people in the market right now, when it’s needed the most, mainly because of what is going on in the world and how we are all being affected,” Tlacopilco said.
Often people on Tlacopilco’s tours are surprised that she has such a close connection to the subject she’s talking about.
“I grew up here,” she said. “I like them to be surprised first. I don’t tell them, ‘Oh, I’m from here.’ I just say, born and raised in Philly. And then once people greet me, they’re like, ‘Everybody knows you.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I grew up here.’ And it’s just a different experience.”
Our Market offers the tour in three languages, English, Spanish and Vietnamese, the three most-spoken languages in the market. There are also resources online, like a free digital tour app that explains the artwork.

Tlacopilco’s favorite part of the tour is a light box created by Ortiz for Andres Hernandez of Adelita Restaurant. The box features an image of Adelita, a female soldier from the Mexican Revolution who not only fought in battles but also cooked and looked after injured people.
“Soy de mujeres luchonas, trabajadoras y empoderadas,” it reads. Or in English, “I come from women who are strong, hardworking, and empowered.”
“I really like his light box because it represents the woman. In a Mexican household, there’s a lot of machismo. Not in my household,” Tlacopilco joked. “But there’s a lot of machismo. And it just shows how it’s all evolving. It shows how we’re all growing as people and as a community.”
Investing back into Ninth Street
The Our Market project is ongoing, so new artwork and investments back into the community are always on the horizon.
Ortiz’s next goal is to create a mural that celebrates Phillip Vu’s store, an everything sort of space with plants, sunglasses and various trinkets for sale.
“We are revitalizing Mr. Phillip Vu’s stand,” she said. “So that’s in the works right now. In my studio, we’re creating new stands for him, new artwork. He is a Vietnamese immigrant, like many who were refugees and eventually arrived and landed here in the market.”


Our Market plans to give Vu’s stand a full revitalization free of cost. Their store was chosen because it is in critical need of an update. He will get new awnings and stands with artwork celebrating his family’s story and their Vietnamese heritage.
Vu’s son, Bao Nguyen, has been helpful in translating for his father and working with Ortiz to create a vision for the new artwork. Nguyen came to the United States with his family when he was only 14 years old.
“My dad just wanted something like palm trees, waters and a boat,” he said. “It reminds me of the past. Back in the day, we used to have waters and palm trees – a very quiet and nice environment. Nobody bothers you. You just sit there and enjoy, so when looking at the picture, it should relax your mind.”
Ortiz said the goal of the new stands was to create something that not only looks good, but will be durable.
“Back in 201, we did a series of awnings that didn’t last very long. It was very beautiful to see, but it was not sustainable,” she explained. “We’ve done interviews and story circles and conversations and gatherings, so it’s much more in depth than what people see … So, for me, it’s a deep investment in time.”
The Our Market project has already worked with a bunch of stores on Ninth Street replacing old stands and awnings with culturally rich artistic replacements. Nguyen is hoping the new look will give the store a more inviting feel to outsiders.
“It has been looking like that for a long time,” Ngugen said, noting the disrepair of the shop. “If you have something new to make the market look better, more people come in and visit. They’re not afraid, so [if] the market looks good, you attract more tourists.”
“I’m excited,” he added.
Working as a community
You never know who you’re going to find on Ninth Street. Wandering around the market with Ortiz, we ran into many familiar faces, including James Beard Award winning chef Christina Martinez of South Philly Barbacoa, and Pip De Luca, owner of Villa di Roma, who also appears on the tour in a 1964 photograph as a kid.
The Our Market Tour ends at Chocolate Art and Crafts, a shop with handmade artwork and gifts celebrating Mexican culture run by Eva Hernández. Ortiz said she hopes to sell tote bags and merchandise with the artwork from the tour at the store in the future.
The Our Market project celebrates the collective immigrant experience of Ninth Street, from the Italian vendors who came in the late 19th century to the Mexican immigrants who came in the late 20th.
“When we speak about our tours, and especially when we speak about the Italian immigrant community, we speak to the fact that it wasn’t easy for them in the very beginning,” Ortiz said. “We speak to some of the challenges that they face because of war, because they were targeted, or measured by how American they were, right?”
Philly has certainly embraced its Italian immigrant legacy, but other immigrant cultures arguably less so. Still, the Italian community’s struggles echo the current challenges that many Latino immigrants currently face in the United States.

“The importance of having the tours is obviously a way to remind people that some of those hardships that the ancestors in the market have experienced, we’re still experiencing to the present day,” Ortiz said.
“With the increased presence of ICE, a lot of people are afraid to come through the market,” she added. “A lot of families are trying to avoid having to go out into the public space. And that’s very unfortunate, right? We live at a very critical moment right now politically. So it’s even more important to come and show support, to come and be present.”
Our Market Tours are now underway in partnership with Beyond the Bell Tours and will run throughout the fall. Scheduled dates are Aug. 2, Sept. 4, Oct. 4, and Nov. 1, 2, 8 and 9. Ortiz notes that private tours may also be arranged outside of those dates by contacting the Our Market Project.
Ortiz said that her parents decided to root their family on Ninth Street in Philadelphia because of “the familiarity of the market,” it reminded them of the similar markets and communities that they left behind — places where people came to buy and exchange food and goods, but also to chat with neighbors and find community.
“What I am very proud of is through the story circles, through some of our interactions with the community and bringing people together, whether it’s through our events or even our interviews, it is a place where people can actually just stop and breathe and reflect and be able to share their stories in a way that we can kind of solidify these connections with our people,” Ortiz said. “They can see themselves in one another. And I think that’s part of the healing process.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)