ABSTRACT
In the territory of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary, approximately 960 settlements held weekly markets, and 321 settlements also had annual fairs. Marketplaces thus played an important role in the lives of medieval townspeople and villagers beyond their commercial function as town and village centres. The market squares, whether they developed inside the city walls (where they existed) or outside them, had at least one common feature: they were located along important roads or at the intersection of roads. Some settlements did not have market squares in the Middle Ages, and commerce was conducted in the streets. This was also true for towns with market squares because major annual fairs could only be organised with the involvement of streets, transforming them into venues of commerce. Most towns had two or more marketplaces, particularly if they had markets that specialised in certain commodities (salt market, grain market, livestock market, etc.). The market square where crowds could easily gather was an ideal place to set up these instruments, or, in lack of them, to carry out punishment in public. The town halls (Rathaus) that started to be built in the late fourteenth century were also situated in the market square. The town halls were often closely connected to the market because sometimes the scales and the money exchange were kept in it. Sooner or later, permanent commercial buildings filled the market square, which may have also contributed to the relocation of the marketplace, while the former area continued to function as a commercial space, but on a more sophisticated level.
