But you will also come upon a hundred crooked little
streets and narrow alleys, which, tho entrancingly picturesque, tell of
yet other days and other conditions.
They tell of those early medieval days when the houses were almost all
of wood and roofed with straw-thatching or wooden tiles; when the
chimneys and bridges alike were built of wood. Only here and there a
stone house roofed with brick could then be seen. The streets were
narrow and crooked, and even in the fifteenth century mostly unpaved. In
wet weather they were filled with unfathomable mud, and even tho in the
lower part of the town trenches were dug to drain the streets, they
remained mere swamps and morasses. In dry weather the dust was even a
worse plague than the mud. Pig-styes stood in front of the houses; and
the streets were covered with heaps of filth and manure and with rotting
corpses of animals, over which the pigs wandered at will. Street police
in fact was practically non-existent. Medievalism is undoubtedly better
when survived.
[Footnote A: From "The Story of Nuremberg." Published by E.P. Dutton &
Co.]
WALLS AND OTHER FORTIFICATIONS[A]
BY CECIL HEADLAM
A glance at the map will show us that Nuremberg, as we know it, is
divided into two almost equal divisions.
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