Daily Life: Shopping

With the cities of Tirenia growing rich from foreign trade, there are more and more shops growing up everywhere. Street vendors sell delicious food, while permanent shops display wares from around the world, and on festival days, vendors would assemble at the local market to offer the greatest range of products. Vanzenia is so rich, it claims to have a market every day! With such a range of products and merchants, a would-be buyer must be wary of being cheated - merchants are mean hagglers, but they might also use rigged scales, or lie about their goods. This is why the cities do their best to regulate the merchants to keep commerce as fair as possible. This is why most shops are open to the street, and why for expensive sales you might hire a public notary to witness it, so both sides could make sure the sale was fulfilled properly.

Permanent shops are now common throughout even the smallest villages in Tirenia, but there is a much greater range of products on sale in a big city like Fiumenze. There are laws about how shops can be located. Those catering to visitors to the city are central, while 'distasteful' but necessary shops might be removed a few blocks. Businesses like tanneries, with their awful stench, are completely isolated on the edge of the city. Most shops would a wide range of products on display, with a workshop out the back able to produce custom or bespoke items, and the shop owner would live above it on the second floor. For the poor, there are also second-hand stores for used clothing and other goods.

Of course, with so much conspicuous wealth comes immorality. Over-indulgence is a sin, so some cities have set up sumptuary taxes to prevent excessive displays of wealth. However, the nobility will take the opportunity to display their great wealth, and custom-made items of exotic materials, or incorporating the family crest, can be commissioned. Fiumenze simply imposes a tax on those who would flout the sumptuary laws, and the richest are happy to pay it! On the other end of the social scale, thievery is rampant and very hard to deter. Rich merchants would hire private guards. Ultimately, the severity of the punishment was intended as the greatest deterrent. Thieves were committing a crime against the city by undermining commerce, and so they would be punished accordingly.

Image result for shopping during the renaissanceArt: 'Market Scene.' Pieter Aertsen, c. 1560.

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