An Introduction to History of Town Planning in the Medieval Europe.

1. TOPIC
MEDIEVAL EUROPE

2. LOCATION
Europe is a small continent, but it is very diverse. Many different
landforms, water features, and climates can be found there. Although
we call Europe a continent, it is actually part of Eurasia, the large
landmass that includes both Europe and Asia. Geographers consider
the Ural Mountains to be the boundary between the two continents

3. Significance
CASTLES
• used as estates and lords/kings lived in them.
• important defensive military places too as it defended it's country from foreign
invaders.
• In times of peace, they served as symbols of power.
• Demonstrated power to the community and were places knights frequently visited
to defend, or live in sometimes .
MEDIEVAL FAIRS
• Objective were trade and commerce
• Local people could go to market at the, both to buy things not normally available
locally, and to sell things they produced.
• Lots of opportunities for fun at the Medieval fairs.
POPULATION GROWTH
• Contributed to the rise of towns.
• An increase in food production was brought about by the cultivation of wastelands,
clearing of forests, and draining of marshes.
RIVERS
• Development of medieval towns
• They were natural highways on which articles of commerce could be easily
transported.
• The resurgence of trade in Europe was a prime cause of the revival of
towns
CHURCH
• Your only contact with the world outside your community was through the church.
• church building itself would have been by far the biggest building you would have
seen, brightly coloured inside and the focal point of the many feast days you had to
attend.

4. Historical/evolutionbackground
1109 – 1113War between England and France
1135Henry I, King of England dies
1143Portugal becomes independent
1152Eleanor of Aquitaine marries Henry Anjou
1170Thomas Becket murdered
1190Henry VI becomes Roman Emperor
1204France captures Normandy
1215Magna Carta Agreed
1223Mongols invaded Russia
1240Mongols capture Russia
1270Philip III becomes King of France
1326Queen Isabella rebels against her
Husband in England
1337 – 1453Hundred years war
between France and
England
1347 – 1350
Black Death sweeps
Europe
1378 – 1417
Great schism
War between England and France
Black Death
Magna Carta

5. Geography/naturalresources
•Europe’s topography varies widely from place to place. Mountain
ranges cover much of southern Europe. Some peaks in the Alps
reach higher than 15,000 feet.
•The highest mountains have large snowfields and glaciers.
North of the Alps, the land is much flatter than in southern Europe.
In fact, most of northern Europe is part of the vast Northern
European Plain.
•The plain stretches all the way from the Atlantic Ocean in the west
to the Ural Mountains in the east. In the past, this huge expanse of
land was covered with thick forests.
•The Northern European Plain is also the location of most of
Europe’s major rivers. Many of these rivers begin with melting snow
in the southern mountains and flow out across the plain on their
way northward to the sea.

6. Culture and it impacton Architectureand City Planning
Culture and it impact on Architecture and City Planning
Of Society Of Trade Of War
The living conditions on land
and the hope of better
economic circumstances drove
the poor to migrate to the
towns. The town and market
centralizing function for the
surrounding countryside.
The early Middle Ages were largely
populated by farmers, and frequently
the artisans also had pieces of ground
which they cultivated.
Only the inner town of Rothenberg,
the Herrenstadt, possesses high-
gabled buildings which were owned
by the town counselors and their
families.
The other main district of Franeker
consisted mainly of large blocks of Streets
with garden areas of varying sizes on the
inside. The better residential districts
grew up alongside the two main canals.
The building of new
towns were increasingly
influenced by the vision
of the 'ideal town' of the
Italian master builders.
Town fortifications in the
form of hexagons
octagons and
dodecagons were
published.
The rectangular network
of streets which is often
broken by radial roads,
was now adopted as an
axiom in town planning-
Through the appearance
of fortification builders,
the physical layout of the
town became subject to
conditions imposed by the
fortifications

7. Politicalbackground
MONARCH
TENANTS-IN-CHIEF
(lords and bishops)
SUB-TENANTS
(knights and lesser clergy)
PEASANTRY
Feudalism
Feudalism can be described as a
type of government in which
political power is exercised
locally by private individuals
rather than through the
bureaucracy of a centralized
state.
Under feudalism in Europe, land not belonging to the ruler or the Church was mostly divided into
manor lands. Each manor was owned by a noble or knight who might have been given it by his lord
as a fief. Manor lands were made up of the demesne (the lord’s land) and the land serfs farmed to
meet their own needs. Manorialism was the economic system that supported feudalism. Under this
arrangement, the lord of a manor provided serfs on his estate with a place to live and the means to
survive. In return, they provided him with their free labour. They also provided taxes (a portion of what
they produced on the small strips of land they farmed themselves). Most serfs were not free to leave
the estate and had to have the lord’s permission to do many everyday tasks.
`
The feudal manor

8. Technologicalachievementand its reflection in planning
•In the 12th and 13th centuries, Europe saw economic growth and innovations in methods of
production. Major technological advances included the invention of the windmill, the first
mechanical clocks, the manufacture of distilled spirits, and the use of the astrolabe. Concave
spectacles were invented around 1286 by an unknown Italian artisan, probably working in or
near Pisa.
•The development of a three-field rotation system for planting crops increased the usage of
land from one half in use each year under the old two-field system to two-thirds under the
new system, with a consequent increase in production.
•The development of the heavy plough allowed heavier soils to be farmed more efficiently,
aided by the spread of the horse collar, which led to the use of draught horses in place of oxen.
Horses are faster than oxen and require less pasture, factors that aided the implementation of
the three-field system.
•The construction of cathedrals and castles advanced building technology, leading to the
development of large stone buildings. Ancillary structures included new town halls, houses,
bridges, and tithe barns.
•Shipbuilding improved with the use of the rib and plank method rather than the old Roman
system of mortise and tenon. Other improvements to ships included the use of lateen sails and
the stern-post rudder, both of which increased the speed at which ships could be sailed.

9. Architectural character of the cities
During the medieval period, basically two types of buildings
• religious medieval buildings
• military medieval buildings.
Christianity was well supported and promoted by kings and lords of the medieval
period and as a result, they also promoted the church building programs and as a
result, some very fine and large religious buildings were constructed during this era
Religious buildings which is known as basilica. This constructional design included a
nave, transepts, and altars.
Christian buildings were also influenced by the Byzantine architectural design as
those cathedrals which had huge domes over the top.
Gothic buildings of medieval period
The constructors of Middle Ages started creating
buildings with perpendicular architecture. These
gothic buildings were constructed in between
13th and 16th century.
Gothic buildings were more suitable for religious
ceremonies because they were lighter and more
spacious.
Unlike Romanesque buildings, Gothic buildings
had wider doors and windows and instead of
roman arch system, builders used flying buttress
and more towers and pillars which increased their
strength.
Gothic buildings were more decorative and
beautiful and one of the most significant
decorative features of these buildings was
gargoyles.

10. The Unplannedtown
• No town was ever wholly unplanned in the sense of being a
randomly distributed assemblage of houses and public
buildings. Every town once had a nucleus that defined its
purpose. This might have been a natural feature such as a river
crossing or a physical obstacle that necessitated a break of bulk,
the transfer of goods from one mode of transportation to
another—from ship to land, from animal transportation to a
wheeled cart. The nucleus might also have been a castle or
natural place of security or defense, a church or an object of
pilgrimage.
• The streets would probably have originated in the paths by
which people approached this nuclear feature and would have
formed a radiating pattern, interlinked by cross streets and
passageways.
• Some roads would have derived from the ways by which people
walked or drove their animals to the surrounding fields.

11. The PlannedTown
• It had laid out straight streets, intersecting at right angles, and thus
enclosing rectangular blocks. This is, indeed, the street plan demonstrated
in Piraeus even today. Such a planned town implies the existence not only of
an overall authority, but also the need to create a relatively large center of
population.
• The planned European city was not restricted to those that derived from the
Greeks or the Romans. Similar conditions during the Middle Ages
contributed to similar developments. The medieval king or baron might
found a city on an empty tract of land. It might be nothing more than an
open-ended street, its houses aligned along each side with their “burgage”
plots reaching back behind them. It might consist of streets intersecting at
right angles. The one pattern would be straggling, the other compact. It
might be that agriculture was more important in the one than in the other,
or, more likely, that the need for security in a hostile environment dictated a
more compact plan around which a wall could be built. Such towns could be
found in all parts of medieval Europe.

12. The Multi-focaltown
• According to legend, which may not have been
so very far from the truth, the city of Rome grew
from the merger of a small number of villages
that had previously crowned its hills. The space
between them was gradually drained, the
Cloaca Maxima (the Great Drain) taking the
water that lay on the lower ground, where the
Forum was later to be established, down to the
river Tiber.
• An enclosing wall, the Servian Wall of some six
miles, then converted the seven hills into a
single city. The Aurelian Wall, constructed under
the empire, was, at over ten miles, even longer.
This pattern was to be replicated in many other
European towns.

13. The Walled town
• Security was a major factor in the creation and growth of most
towns. The Middle Ages were a lawless time, and most citizens
had much to lose not only from the activities of the common
thief, but also from the depredations of ill-disciplined armies who
made it a practice to live off the country.
• There was, therefore, some safety in numbers, and, added to this,
the medieval town usually took steps to defend itself against
these evils.
• During the “dark” centuries that followed, urban housing and
public buildings decayed, but walls survived, though doubtless
increasingly ruinous. When urban life began to revive, their walls
were still there, an object lesson in fortification and urban
security. In town after town in western Europe the walls that had
given their citizens protection under the empire were patched
and repaired and, here and there extended to take in a newly
developed suburb, again made to serve.

14. The Bridge town
• Most towns in western and central Europe grew up on the banks of a river.
In southern Europe, towns were more likely to have been located on a
hilltop, or at least on higher ground. This may have been because of the
need for a naturally defensible site, but just as likely it was to es- cape the
malaria-carrying mosquito, which bred in the lakes and marshes of the
valley floor.
• A riverside location offered great advantages. The river itself served both
as a source of water and as a sewer. River navigation was in much of
Europe the cheapest, the easiest, and the safest form of transportation,
and, furthermore, simply being on the banks of a river gave the town some
protection on at least one side.
• There were even towns that had their origin on an island encircled and
protected by the branches of a river. Paris, which developed first on the Ile
de la Cite, may be the best known, but there are others, such as
Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Wroclaw (Breslau) in Poland.
Sources
• The Medieval City – Dr. Norman Pounds
• Hilary L. Turner, Town Defences in England and Wales: An Architectural
and Documentary Study
• Illustrations from “Towns of the World” by Georg Braun and Franz
Hogenberg
• William Langland, William Langland’s “Piers Plowman”: The C Version:
A Verse Tranlsation, ed. George Economou, Middle Ages Series
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996)

15. Town planning:Carcassonne
Carcassonne is located in the Aude plain between two great
axis of circulation linking the Atlantic to the Mediterranean
sea and the Massif Central to the Pyrenees.
Its strategic importance was quickly recognized by the Romans
who occupied its hilltop until the demise of their western empire
and was later taken over by the Visigoths in the fifth century who
founded the city.
Location map of Carcassonne

16. Town planning:Carcassonne
•Carcassonne is a fortified medieval walled city in southwestern France.
•The City of Carcassonne’s double row of fortified walls run almost two miles long
and accentuated by 56 imposing watchtowers.
•The city of Carcassonne followed a irregular pattern of planning composing of
market square, castle and church.
•The fortification was protected by the construction of a defensive wall some
1,200 m long. The fortifications, consisting of two lines of walls and a castle,
which is itself surrounded by fortifications, extend over a total length of 3 km

17. Town planning:Carcassonne
•Irregular pattern of streets are seen.
•The market square has narrow streets which also follows a irregular pattern.
•The walled town of Carcassonne is roughly rectangular in shape, up to 525 meters long
and 250 m wide. It is surrounded by its medieval double enclosure wall; the inner curtain
is 1245 m in length, with 29 towers, while the outer has 18 towers and is 1320 m long.
• The outer wall contains seventeen towers and barbicans. Most of the outer towers were
built with open sides facing the inner walls so that if taken the towers could not provide
protection for the attackers.