How many buildings in a medieval city?

Just a question about buildings:

I know you said that towns wouldn't have warehouses, but, what about granaries and stables? Surely they would be big enough to be counted wouldn't they? Although, as I write this, maybe there wouldn't be that many buildings overall anyway. It's not like every house would have a stable like a modern house would have a garage.

There are potentially quite a few other things that would exist in any modest sized town as well. There would probably be for instance slaughterhouses, coopers, tanners, candlemakers, weavers, soap makers, tile and brick makers, potters, lumber mills/yards, etc. Not to mention baths, hospitals, government offices, monasteries (or something similar), etc. All these things existed within the walls of medieval towns. Larger towns/cities, particularly in large and more urbanized kingdoms would probably sport colosseums, race tracks, etc as well. Large areas of shopping and market arcades were very common.

If you look at maps of ancient cities in particular you find that public space could be an inordinately large part of the city, with vast temple and palace complexes sometimes occupying more than half of the area. Of course these kinds of buildings were home to many people! There was also often substantial open space even within city walls, particularly if the city has fallen on hard times (old buildings rarely last long, people scavenge the wood and stone in a few years). Even a densely packed city requires a fair amount of open space, and there will almost surely be some wide boulevards or other similar things in a bigger city.

I'd note for instance that the 1300 London linked above contained a LOT of open space, the walls were built by the Romans in the 200's and even in 1300 the city was smaller than in Roman times.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Remove ads

AD6_gamerati_skyscraper

Remove ads

Recent & Upcoming Releases

Top