Review of Life in a Medieval City

A gem of a book. I can soak for hours in descriptions of historical daily life such as these. Some notes and quotes from Chapter 3:

• The cathedral, as the seat of a bishop, had the right to ring bells before the count's chapel and Notre-Dame-aux-Nonnains
• The housewife's first chore in the day is shopping for food. In the streets surrounding St-Jean, signs furnish a colorful punctuation: a grape bush for the vintner; gilded pills for the apothecary; a red-striped hand and forearm for the barber-surgeon; a horse for the harness-maker; a unicorn for the goldsmith
• In the butchers' quarter, slaughtering is performed on the spot [...] blood dries in the sun amid piles of offal, swarms of flies.
• The poulterer sells geese, chickens, ducks, rabbits [...] their legs trussed, they flounder on the ground.
• Sweeteners and spices are expensive; prices of different-sized loaves are set by regulation; each baker must mark loaves with his seal.
• In a well-to-do burgher's house, ceaseless war is carried [out against insects]. All 4 stories of the house are occupied by the burgher and his family. In the rear are stables and storehouses; the toilet is a privy in the stableyard. The first floor is for business; it contains an anteroom and a workshop or counting room. The second floor holds the solar (living and dining room), with a hearth on one wall, and the kitchen. On the third floor is a big canopied master bed with a clothes-hanging pole running above the head of the bed; children's smaller beds are here, too. The fourth floor is for the servants.
• The building is large and low-ceilinged; the floors are covered with rushes; narrow windows [are] filled with oiled parchment; on the walls hang panels of dyed and embroidered linen cloth, but there are no tapestries yet. Furniture is drab; costume is not.