A lot of us will have encountered discussions of the revolution in domestic architecture of the 17-18c that gave us (1) the corridor and (2) rooms specialized for particular functions in a house. We can imagine the older order in stately homes and castles because we've seen those great halls and the long stretches of rooms opening onto rooms. And we can imagine the rustic cottages with everyone packed into one room for everything, with maybe the livestock not far off.
But here's an article I ran across (in French, but with some interesting visuals) that focusses on housing in the town, specifically Paris in the 16-17c. And boy, is it different from the way we live now. The building plots, of course, were narrow and deep, and many included a back-building for storage, stabling, or extra living space, sometimes freestanding & sometimes linked to the main house, with a courtyard. Inside the house, rooms let onto rooms, no corridors, and as little space given to the staircase (often circular) as possible. The rooms were differentiated by size, not by any designated purpose. The wealthiest people occupied an entire house, but then as now most urban dwellers were renters under a common roof. (There are quite a few houses of this era still standing in Paris, but most of them have had their interior arrangements updated significantly in the last couple of centuries. Running water, for instance, and stairwells.)
The most striking difference from today -- when you rented lodging in 16-17c Paris, you weren't renting an apartment in our modern sense, a room or a suite of rooms that were private to you behind a door. You rented a certain number of rooms, but they were probably not contiguous -- you might have a room on the second floor, another on the fifth, a third in the back building. Same for your neighbors in the house. When you were in funds, you might add another room, or consolidate into fewer if money was tight. And because there were no corridors in these houses, this meant that you would have to go through your neighbors' rooms to get from one of yours to another, and vice versa.
It's a way of living that's hard for us moderns to imagine, much less write. Still, the possibilities for drama (not to mention farce) are endless!
In your research, have you come across points like this, where fundamental aspects of living are so alien to our modern assumptions of what's normal? Does it show up in your writing?
But here's an article I ran across (in French, but with some interesting visuals) that focusses on housing in the town, specifically Paris in the 16-17c. And boy, is it different from the way we live now. The building plots, of course, were narrow and deep, and many included a back-building for storage, stabling, or extra living space, sometimes freestanding & sometimes linked to the main house, with a courtyard. Inside the house, rooms let onto rooms, no corridors, and as little space given to the staircase (often circular) as possible. The rooms were differentiated by size, not by any designated purpose. The wealthiest people occupied an entire house, but then as now most urban dwellers were renters under a common roof. (There are quite a few houses of this era still standing in Paris, but most of them have had their interior arrangements updated significantly in the last couple of centuries. Running water, for instance, and stairwells.)
The most striking difference from today -- when you rented lodging in 16-17c Paris, you weren't renting an apartment in our modern sense, a room or a suite of rooms that were private to you behind a door. You rented a certain number of rooms, but they were probably not contiguous -- you might have a room on the second floor, another on the fifth, a third in the back building. Same for your neighbors in the house. When you were in funds, you might add another room, or consolidate into fewer if money was tight. And because there were no corridors in these houses, this meant that you would have to go through your neighbors' rooms to get from one of yours to another, and vice versa.
It's a way of living that's hard for us moderns to imagine, much less write. Still, the possibilities for drama (not to mention farce) are endless!
In your research, have you come across points like this, where fundamental aspects of living are so alien to our modern assumptions of what's normal? Does it show up in your writing?