18th century Europe cities
Hello, I'm not sure if this is the correct place to ask, but I think I'm in need of some city layouts. I GM and my 13y/o stepson's the sole player in our little game. The world is earth, year 1736, but with fantasy races and magic etc thrown into the mix. It's rather low on the realism scale, but I try to throw in assorted real details from that time. At the moment his character is about to go on a journey, walking from the western shore of the black sea heading to France. This journey is the basis arch for different stories. There are a bunch of cities on the way, and I'd love to get even approximate layouts of those during that time. Ive tried googling around, but with rather little success. So if anybody has any information about how say Bucharest looked like, maps, pictures, even educated guesses are welcome, please let me know! Secondly, maybe this is a bad idea? Should I just generate the cities myself to make them fit my quests by desing etc?
Posted Dec 15, 2018, 11:50 AM UTC
r/papertowns has a lot of maps from that period ish.
Generally, cities in that period still followed the medieval Street patterns, sometimes with some new districts planned in a more orderly grid pattern. City walls were made with earthen walls and moats (star forts), which generally also meant there was some space inside for orchards, parks, etc.
Architecturally, many cities now had stone/brick buildings with glass, cobbled main streets, etc. For some inspiration you could check out oil paintings from the period, many of them are online on the website of eg London's National Gallery or Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum. You could also play Assassin's Creed 3 and it's sequels to get some idea.