Images of streets from the middle ages

[Dominion]

I want to have an interaction with a short-fused character who may give chase to at least one of the heroes.

I would send them images of streets while describing them running and give them about 6 seconds to decide what to do or if something is happening etc. creating a "chased" feeling with this time pressure and through narrative.

I would love to have various pictures to play off of. Like "someone slowly leaves through the door to your left, reflex throw or you run into them" etc.

Anyone know what I should search for?

Setting is a mining city.

[Martin Greywolf]

Genuinely medieval stuff is pretty muc non-existent. I'm not even sure if there is a single artist that could make a painting of one, at least not one that has enough of an idea about how such a city looked.

If we bend the terms a bit and go for renaissance era, you do get a few still standing towns.

https://dronepaint.sk/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Kremnica.jpg
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/aVXTnj7vmrM/maxresdefault.jpg

https://dynamic-media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-o/0c/87/7b/3c/view-of-the-old-center.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Baia_Mare-_centru_istoric.jpg

Hopping on google maps and going for a virtual walk isn't a bad idea.

As for more general stuff, you could try looking up a book that deals with medieval towns in general, if you want to go really deep down the rabbit hole. Barring that, remember that gardens are small if they exist at all and space is at a premium. Roads are of two types, the main ones, that are likely paved with stone or wood, and side streets that may or may not be paved. THe main roads will be wide enough for two wagos to pass each other, side streets will be big enough for at least one - barring the side side streets.

https://manuscriptminiatures.com/image/8536/1000
https://manuscriptminiatures.com/image/17783/1000
https://manuscriptminiatures.com/image/7503/1000
https://manuscriptminiatures.com/image/9029/1000
https://manuscriptminiatures.com/image/9796/1000

[Dominion]

Thank you so much for those two and I will definitely try taking a virtual walk through them :)

Modern drawings would work too, only issue is they'd have to have the same theme.

It's only a tool to help players visualize and put pressure on them (you have seen this image for the first time, you have 6 seconds to process it and react).

[Tvtyrant]

My gut instinct is they would look like shack/shanty towns with some bigger buildings mixed in. Without the need for plumbing or electricity there's not much need for building codes, and property rights would be kind of backfilled in from expansions. Each time the city fills in the walls the area outside would become a new Hooverville until that became big enough to require new walls, in which case they repeat the process.

[Rynjin]

Taking screenshots from Kingdom Come: Deliverance might give you what you need. It is a video game that was intended largely as a historically accurate recreation of the Kingdom of Bohemia during the 15th century.

Here's some I could find online, but there are a lot of better ones you could take if you owned the game yourself.


https://www.windowscentral.com/sites/wpcentral.com/files/styles/large/public/field/image/2018/02/kingdom-come-deliverance-8.jpg
https://w3ask.com/img/kingdom-come-castle-2.jpg
https://s31092.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Kingdom-Come-Deliverance-1320x743.jpg

[Martin Greywolf]

My gut instinct is they would look like shack/shanty towns with some bigger buildings mixed in. Without the need for plumbing or electricity there's not much need for building codes, and property rights would be kind of backfilled in from expansions. Each time the city fills in the walls the area outside would become a new Hooverville until that became big enough to require new walls, in which case they repeat the process.

Don't mix in medieval mining towns with American frontier mining towns. Old world mining towns were well-organized, rich and pretty fancy-looking, since mining was a lucrative business and nobles, or more often the kings, oversaw them very closely. While you did have districts for the poorer people to live, shanty-towns were almost non-existent.

Mining town was probably the number one best place to live, even beating holdings of nobility and royalty, since you didn't have to go to war that often and didn't usually have to travel during winter for diplomatic reasons (the latter killed at least one Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund).


Taking screenshots from Kingdom Come: Deliverance might give you what you need. It is a video game that was intended largely as a historically accurate recreation of the Kingdom of Bohemia during the 15th century.

Here's some I could find online, but there are a lot of better ones you could take if you owned the game yourself.

KCD is a mixed bag. Some of the buildings are spot on reproductions, others fall prey to the whole mud ages aesthetic, and clothes are entirely, badly wrong. Also, Cumans are displaced by about two centuries.

Since I have a bit of time, here are some potentially relevant bits from the City Privileges of Banska Bystrica.

[...]
[The citizens] can also look for gold, silver and other metals inside the borders of entire comitate of Zvolen [~equivalent to a duchy], as well as have the freedom to use all the forests and waters in all manners except for hunting and fishing. Further, they will pay one tenth of all mined gold, and one eighth of silver and other metals.
[...]
Okrem toho, aby sa všetko nakrátko uzavrelo, našim spomínaným hosťom dávame oráčiny, lesy a lúky do úžitku, na ktorých nech sa ich nikto neopováži obťažovať.
Furthermore, we give our [citizens] arable land, forests and meadows to use freely, without interference from anyone.
[...]


The biggest takeaway from this is probably that the city owns, and has jurisdiction over, a hell of a lot of land outside its walls.

[jjordan]

An 18th Century image but a good representation of a pre-modern mining town:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Schemnitz_in_Danubius_Pannonico-Mysicus_1726_by_Marsigli.jpg

Goslar, Germany, was an important mining town for a very long time and has some well preserved streets that might be seen in Google Maps streetview.
https://www.gpsmycity.com/blog/goslar--germany-a-place-where-medieval-life-is-still-alive-1140.html
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Rammelsberg_Goslar_Bildkarte_1574_Matz_Sincken.jpg

Underground Europe has a list of historically important mining sites in Europe and is a good starting point.
https://visitworldheritage.com/en/eu/underground-europe/e72e47f7-90ad-484b-9a6d-3b69e3f5b106
https://cdn.elebase.io/173fe953-8a63-4a8a-8ca3-1bacb56d78a5/5a4c9c2f-f337-4f63-8479-99afdc53c777-03-modelofwieliczka_arturgrzybowski.jpg?w=1000&h=500&fit=crop&q=75

[Rynjin]

KCD is a mixed bag. Some of the buildings are spot on reproductions, others fall prey to the whole mud ages aesthetic, and clothes are entirely, badly wrong. Also, Cumans are displaced by about two centuries.



Maybe, but it's more than good enough for a one-off chase scene in your tabletop game, IMO.

[KorvinStarmast]

I want to have an interaction with a short-fused character who may give chase to at least one of the heroes.

I would send them images of streets while describing them running and give them about 6 seconds to decide what to do or if something is happening etc. creating a "chased" feeling with this time pressure and through narrative.

I would love to have various pictures to play off of. Like "someone slowly leaves through the door to your left, reflex throw or you run into them" etc.

Anyone know what I should search for?

Setting is a mining city. I'll suggest an essay by Poul Anderson called "On Thud and Blunder (https://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/04/on-thud-and-blunder/)" :smallbiggrin: "Streets" in the middle ages are mostly mud.

[Beleriphon]

One option to look at would be Assassin's Creed. The first one. The game is set during the First Crusade and features King Richard and Saladin as characters. It is by all accounts a highly accurate reproduction of the cities of the period. I'd suggest looking at screen caps of Acre.

[Martin Greywolf]

I'll suggest an essay by Poul Anderson called "On Thud and Blunder (https://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/04/on-thud-and-blunder/)" :smallbiggrin: "Streets" in the middle ages are mostly mud.

And he's wrong about that. He references early 1900s London specifically as an example, which... There's a host of problems with that, the short story is that London was running on systems that were fairly okay in medieval-scale cities of usually 5 000-20 000 people, but collapsed catastrophically when overloaded, and London in 1900 had 5 million people in it.

While a medieval town was by no means a sparkling clean place, you didn't have piles of horse dung everywhere either, and main streets tended to be paved. There is even some evidence of roads between cities having a wooden paving if they were busy enough, strongly indicating that most of town streets were paved already before they started doing that.


One option to look at would be Assassin's Creed. The first one. The game is set during the First Crusade and features King Richard and Saladin as characters. It is by all accounts a highly accurate reproduction of the cities of the period. I'd suggest looking at screen caps of Acre.

Structurally, it's great, but id does need more color. While bare stone exterior walls weren't unheard of, there was a lot of houses with plaster of various colors, white being the popular cheap option.

[KorvinStarmast]

And he's wrong about that. He references early 1900s London specifically as an example, which... There's a host of problems with that, the short story is that London was running on systems that were fairly okay in medieval-scale cities of usually 5 000-20 000 people, but collapsed catastrophically when overloaded, and London in 1900 had 5 million people in it.

While a medieval town was by no means a sparkling clean place, you didn't have piles of horse dung everywhere either, and main streets tended to be paved. There is even some evidence of roads between cities having a wooden paving if they were busy enough, strongly indicating that most of town streets were paved already before they started doing that. Some walled towns, and some cities, and some streets - depends. Also, Blanning (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/291824/the-pursuit-of-glory-by-tim-blanning/)points out the decrepit nature of roads and paving {Pursuit of Glory} across all of Europe. It was an uphill struggle, hardly remedied during the 17th and 18th centuries, though progress was indeed made (and those kingdoms who did put in the effort saw commerce increase). In Mideival times? From the Lord's manse to a town? Yeah. He had the money (maybe) and interest to build a road or a bridge. Everyone else got to slog through the mud.

[Beleriphon]

Another thought I had on this: The Witcher 3, specifically Novigrad and surrounding villages are clearly fantasy inspired by 13th through 14th century towns and villages. Novigrad looks more like an Eastern European walled city.

Oxenfurt is a nod to Oxford, and probably more in line what you want for a walled town.

All of them are clearly fantasy type cities, Novigrad for example has a huge temple on a cliff, but the ground level is probably in line with what you're looking for.