The Fantasy Writer's Guide to Filling a Medieval City (Because Your Characters Need More Than a Tavern and a Castle)
Let's be honest. Most of us default to the same five buildings when we're writing a medieval-inspired fantasy city. There's a tavern. There's a castle. There's a marketplace. Maybe a blacksmith. Maybe a temple if we're feeling ambitious. And then our characters just sort of wander between those five locations for 400 pages like they're living in the most depressing theme park ever built.
A real medieval city was a chaotic, layered, often disgusting, occasionally beautiful ecosystem of commerce, faith, governance, survival, and entertainment. And the more specific you get with the buildings your characters pass, enter, avoid, or burn down, the more alive your world feels on the page.
This is not an exhaustive list. It's a starting point. Steal what you need.
Commerce and Trade
Tavern (yes, fine, you can keep it)
Inn or coaching house (not the same as a tavern; this is where travelers actually sleep)
Brewery or alehouse
Winery or wine merchant
Distillery
Bakery
Butcher shop
Fishmonger
Cheesemonger
Spice merchant
Salt merchant (salt was a massive deal; wars were fought over it)
Grain merchant or granary
General market hall or covered market
Open-air market square with semi-permanent stalls
Textile merchant or draper
Tailor or seamstress shop
Cobbler or shoemaker
Tanner or leatherworker (these were almost always on the outskirts because the smell was unholy)
Furrier
Chandler (candle maker, and yes, this was its own trade)
Soap maker
Apothecary
Herbalist
Perfumer (more common than you'd think in cities where everything smelled like death)
Jeweler or goldsmith
Silversmith
Gemcutter
Glassblower or glazier
Potter
Cooper (barrel maker, and barrels were essential for literally everything)
Wheelwright
Cartwright
Rope maker
Basket weaver
Paper maker or parchment seller
Bookbinder
Ink maker
Scribe or copyist shop
Mapmaker or cartographer
Blacksmith or farrier
Armorer
Weaponsmith
Fletcher (arrow maker)
Bowyer (bow maker, often a separate trade from the fletcher)
Woodcarver
Carpenter's workshop
Stonemason's yard
Painter or sign maker
Dyer (another one banished to the outskirts because of the chemicals and smell)
Weaver's workshop or loom house
Silk merchant (if your world trades in luxury goods)
Pawnbroker or moneylender
Money changer
Trading post or factor's office (for long-distance trade)
Warehouse or bonded storehouse
Auction house
Food and Gathering
Cookshop or pie shop (fast food for people who didn't have kitchens, which was most people)
Street food stalls or vendors
Tea house or coffee house (depending on your world's available crops)
Feast hall or banquet hall
Wine cellar or tasting room
Public oven (many people didn't have their own and paid to use a communal one)
Governance and Law
Castle or keep
Lord's manor house
Town hall or guildhall
Courthouse or magistrate's hall
Tax collector's office
Customs house (at city gates or ports)
Treasury or mint
City watch barracks or guard house
Gatehouse (every walled city had them and they were often small buildings in themselves)
Toll house (at bridges or city entrances)
Prison or dungeon (not always in the castle; many cities had standalone jails)
Stocks or pillory square (public punishment was entertainment)
Execution grounds or gallows hill
Embassy or foreign dignitary's residence
Herald's office or crier's post
Faith and Spirituality
Cathedral or grand temple
Parish church or neighborhood chapel
Monastery or abbey
Convent or nunnery
Shrine or roadside chapel
Pilgrimage hostel
Cemetery or churchyard
Ossuary or charnel house (when the cemetery got too full)
Bell tower (sometimes freestanding)
Oracle's chamber or divination house (for your fantasy-specific religions)
Sacred grove or holy garden (if your faith system is nature-based)
Healing and Death
Healer's shop or surgeon's office
Midwife's house
Hospital or infirmary (often attached to a monastery)
Leper colony or quarantine house (outside city walls)
Plague house (boarded up and marked)
Undertaker or gravedigger's shed
Embalmer
Crematorium (depending on your world's death customs)
Education and Knowledge
University or academy
Library (often private or attached to a religious institution)
Scholar's study or philosopher's salon
Mage's tower or magical academy (your fantasy addition)
Alchemist's laboratory
Astronomer's observatory
School or tutor's house
Music school or conservatory
Language school (in trade cities, these were common)
Crafts and Industry
Mill (water, wind, or animal-powered)
Sawmill or lumber yard
Kiln (for bricks, pottery, or lime)
Forge or smelter
Quarry office (if near stone sources)
Shipyard or dry dock (coastal or river cities)
Sail maker or rigger's loft
Net maker (fishing towns)
Fulling mill (for processing wool; loud, wet, and miserable)
Mint (for coin production)
Glue maker (rendered animal parts; another one shoved to the edge of town)
Entertainment and Leisure
Amphitheater or open-air stage
Playhouse or theater
Fighting pit or arena
Jousting grounds or tournament field
Gambling den
Brothel or pleasure house
Bathhouse (public bathing was far more common in medieval settings than most fantasy acknowledges)
Menagerie or exotic animal display
Garden or pleasure park (for the wealthy)
Music hall or minstrel's gallery
Fairground (seasonal but often with permanent structures)
Bear-baiting or animal fighting ring (grim but historically accurate)
Archery range or training yard
Infrastructure and Services
Well house or public fountain
Cistern or water tower
Aqueduct terminus
Public latrine (yes, these existed, and they matter for worldbuilding)
Sewer access or drain system (more common in larger cities than you'd think)
Lamplighter's station (if your city has street lighting)
Bridge (often with buildings on top of it; London Bridge had over 200)
Ferry landing
Stable or livery
Kennel (for hunting dogs)
Mews (for falcons and hawks)
Dovecote or pigeon house (communication and food)
Icehouse (underground storage for preserved food)
Communal washing area or laundry
Rubbish heap or midden (cities had designated dumping areas)
Night soil collector's yard (somebody had to deal with the sewage)
Housing
Noble's townhouse
Merchant's house (often with shop on the ground floor, living quarters above)
Craftsman's house and workshop combined
Tenement or row housing for laborers
Boarding house or lodging house
Almshouse (charity housing for the elderly or destitute)
Orphanage
Servants' quarters (sometimes a separate building from the main house)
Military and Defense
City walls and towers
Armory or arsenal
Barracks
Training grounds or drill yard
Siege works or defensive earthworks
Signal tower or beacon
War room or strategic planning hall
Veteran's home or retired soldiers' quarters
The Outskirts and Edges
These are the buildings and areas that existed just outside the city walls or on the margins. They ended up there because they were too smelly, too dangerous, too polluting, or too socially unacceptable for the city center. Don't skip these. The edges of a city are some of the best locations for scenes.
Tannery
Dye works
Slaughterhouse
Rendering yard
Leper house
Executioner's residence (they were social outcasts and usually lived outside the walls)
Knacker's yard (disposal of dead animals)
Charcoal burner's camp
Potter's field (burial ground for the poor and unknown)
Traveler's camp or caravan grounds
Hermit's hut or anchorite's cell
Smuggler's den or hidden storehouse (every trade city had them)
Refugee camp or shantytown (during wars or famines)
Witch's cottage or hedge wizard's hut (your fantasy-specific addition)
A Few Things to Keep in Mind
Smell was everywhere. A real medieval city was an assault on the senses. Tanneries used animal urine and feces. Dyers used chemicals that burned your eyes. Butchers dumped waste in the streets. The river was often an open sewer. If your fantasy city smells like nothing, you're missing an opportunity to make it feel real.
Zoning was a thing, even without the word for it. Trades that produced noise, stench, or pollution were pushed to specific neighborhoods or outside the walls entirely. Wealthy merchants lived near the center or on higher ground. The poor lived near the walls or downriver from the nice neighborhoods. Where your characters live in the city tells the reader something about who they are.
Not every building needs a scene. But knowing these buildings exist in your world means your characters can walk past a chandler's shop, mention the smell from the tannery district, hear the hammering from the cooper's yard, or meet a contact at the fuller's mill. That texture is what separates a world that feels invented from one that feels inhabited.
Now go fill your cities.
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