PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Musílek, Martin
TI  - House Owners - Tenants - Lodgers : The Topographical, Economic and Social Issues of Tenement Houses in Medieval Prague
DP  - 2020 Dec 15
TA  - Staletá Praha
PG  - 2--36
VI  - 36
IP  - 2
AID - 10.56112/sp.2020.2.01
IS  - 02316056
AB  - Based on the written sources preserved from the 14th and 15th centuries, the presented study attempts to research housing tenancy with an interdisciplinary perspective and the prism of five selected topics: 1. tenancy contracts; 2. town house and its layout through the eyes of history and building history; 3. analysis of the Old Town municipal tax books from the years 1427-1429; 4. analysis of the town tax and the method of its collection in the Old Town of Prague; 5. social rise of lodgers. Two other topics are supplemented: 6. housing tenancy and its influence on the religious and power-administrative organization of the city; 7. social structure of the inhabitants of Prague houses on the specific example of three persons: the owner, the tenant-conventor and the lodger. The Prague conurbation as the centre of the country and the seat of the monarch turns out to have been such an exclusive urban agglomeration that only members of the upper and middle classes of the urban population reached their own property here. Small craftsmen and merchants had to be satisfied only with the tenancy of production and accommodation premises. During the 14th century, the dynamically developing Luxembourg metropolis went through a construction boom. The house plot was densely filled; dozens of new houses were being built not for the owner's stay, but for commercial rent. It is clear that this development significantly affected the architectural appearance and organism of the medieval city.