European cities and towns are considered places with a particular order established by their inhabitants. This volume centres on the authorities, groups, and individuals who formed the rules for common life in urban communities. It considers the protagonists of urban order between the Middle Ages and modernity: those who were responsible for the common welfare, those who produced change, and those who caused disorder. The authors focus on the practices that shaped the order of urban communities and in particular on situations in which this order was transformed socially and spatially. By looking at urban order through this lens, the volume sheds light on the complex interplay of interests that can bring about change.

Irena Benyovsky Latin is a scholarly advisor at the Croatian Institute of History and general secretary of the International Commission for the History of Towns. She researches the history of cities in medieval Dalmatia. Books she published are Srednjovjekovni Trogir. Prostor i drustvo (2009), and Socijalna topografija srednjovjekovnoga Dubrovnika (2024).

Martina Stercken is a professor of Medieval History and Regional Studies at the University of Zurich (Switzerland). Her research interests include urban history, the history of power, and medieval cartography. Books she published are Urbanität (2016), Kommunale Selbstinszenierung (2018), and Stadtentwicklung im vormodernen Europa (2021).

Tonija Andric is an associate professor at Split University, Departement of History (Croatia). Her research interests include the social and economic history of the Middle Ages. Books she published are Zivot u srednjovjekovnom Splitu: svakodnevica obrtnika u 14. i 15. stoljecu (2018), and Povijest Splita u srednjem vijeku (2020).

Dedication page
About the volume
1. Introduction
1. 1. Irena Benyovsky Latin, Protagonists of Urban Order in Pre-Modern Times
2. Representing Urban Order
2.1. Zdenka Janekovi. Römer, Traditional and New Ways of Dubrovnik’s Noble Elite to Maintain Urban Order in the Fourteenth Century
2.2. Martina Stercken, Guardians of Urban Order? Autocratic Mayors in the Late Middle Ages: The Case of Hans Waldmann
2.3. Donatella Calabi, Magistrates of the Venetian Republic as Decision Makers and Executors Welcoming Foreigners to the City (Fifteenth – Sixteenth Centuries)
3. Transforming Spatial Order
3.1. Keith D. Lilley, Mythologising Cities and Kings: The Wessex burhs of King Alfred the Great
3.2. Rosa Smurra, Spatial Order and City Authorities in Thirteenth-Century Bologna
3.3. Francesco Panarelli, The Role of Female Monasteries in the Organization of Urban Spaces in Southern Italian Cities: The Case of Matera
3.4. Marco Cadinu, Urban Community and the Common Good Control over the Building Activities and Water Management in Southern Italy (Thirteenth – Fourteenth Centuries)
4. Changing Social Order
4.1. John Henderson, Plague and the Social Order in Early Modern Italy: Tuscany, 1630-1633
4.2. Peter Clark, Civil Society and Urban Order: Suggestions and Questions
4.3. Steinar Aas, Urban Order in the Early Years of Narvik (1902-1910)
5. Protagonists of Urban Order in a Diachronic Perspective
5.1. Michel Pauly, Protagonists of Urban Spatial Order in a Longue Durée Perspective: Example of the City of Luxembourg
5.2. Lauren.iu R.dvan, From Medieval Principality to Modern State: The Impact of Change on Towns in the Romanian Area
5.3. Thomas Riis, Perceptions of Urban Poverty and Good Polity in Denmark from the Black Death to 2021