TOPIC MEDIEVAL EUROPE

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

SignificanceCASTLES• 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

townsCHURCH• 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.

Historical/evolution background1109 – 1113War between England and France

1135Henry I, King of England dies

1143Portugal becomes independent

1152Eleanor of Aquitaine marries Henry Anjou

1170 Thomas 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 – 1453 Hundred 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

Geography/natural resources•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.

Culture and it impact on Architecture and 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 Franekerconsisted 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

Political background

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 tomeet 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

Technological achievement and 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.

Architectural character of the citiesDuring 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 eraReligious 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 periodThe 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.

The Unplanned town

• 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.

The Planned Town

• 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.

The Multi-focal town

• 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.

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.

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)

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

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

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.