As the main task of medieval cities was to promote handicraft production and commercial exchange, they were invariably centred around marketplaces. This is where trade and commerce was conducted, news and information from around the world exchanged, grand church ceremonies held, exhibitions staged and, provided the city was vested with the “right of the sword”, condemned prisoners executed (which usually attracted especially large crowds of spectators).
The town hall, being the seat of the municipal authorities, generally, but not always, stood in the marketplace. The town hall clock, which both embellished the tower and regulated the lives of the citizenry, was usually the pride of the city. Streets were most often named after the crafts practised by their residents (Carpenter, Fitter, Fisher etc.), the names of their nearest houses of worship or the names of the cities they led to.
Townhouses facing the marketplace mostly occupied 1/3 of the area of the site. The ground floor housed a craftsman’s workshop or a merchant’s counting room, the entertainment rooms were on the first floor, and the owner’s private rooms on the upper levels. The yard housed buildings like stables and storerooms, and a well and a latrine which doubled as a rubbish dump. The city moat was likewise a catchment for all sorts of filth. The moat was most often connected to a nearby river - indeed the river sometimes constituted part of the moat. Organising systematic cleanups of the moat was one of the most frequently recurring themes in the ordinances gazetted by the city authorities.
The dead were buried in cemeteries near churches. The decree to bury people in cemeteries outside the city walls for sanitary reasons was only issued at the end of the 18th century. Obviously, the tradition of burying especially distinguished people in churches – either under the floor in a crypt – lingered on.
Exercising judicial offices used to be one of the most important tasks of the vogt and the city court. Crime was as commonplace then as it is now; only the methods of combating and punishing it were different. Executions were the task of the chief executioner, who had several helpers at his disposal. This professional was given the tasks of interrogating the accused (in the presence and on the recommendation of judges), executing sentences, cleaning the city of corpses and catching stray animals. The master had an official apartment in one of the city towers at his disposal. The city brothel, run by his wife, was located there as well.
The pillory was once a symbol of justice and a manifestation of municipal court powers and, as such, normally stood near the seat of municipal authority – the town hall. Despite the occasional opinion to the contrary, death sentences were not carried out here. Convicts were most often flogged (hence the typical, columnar shape, making it easier to tether the culprit), stigmatised and held up to ridicule at the pillory. Many a coveter of his or her neighbour’s goods lost an ear or a right hand into the bargain. The one in Poznań is one of the few remaining in Poland.
Criminals were burnt at the stake, dismembered and decapitated, but never hanged, outside the town hall. The Poznań city gallows were initially located around today’s ul. Solna and ul. Garbara, and then later in Wilda, near ul. Krzyżowa (this name comes from the krzyż [cross] before which convicts said their final prayers before being executed). A death sentence by drowning was executed by throwing the convict into the Warta from the Chwaliszewski bridge.
This entire range of judicial measures in no way differed from the procedures adopted in other cities of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth and elsewhere in Europe.