Why were Wallachia’s medieval market towns where they are?

Where would merchants gather?#

At the foot of a mountain crossing, beside a ford, close to the ruler’s court? Place three marks on the relief. For now, the towns are hidden.

Tap the map three times. Tap a mark to remove it.

Drop three marks.

The records place them one by one#

Start the timeline. Each dot appears at the earliest record selected for that place: customs, a boundary, a mill or an act issued there. This is not a timeline of foundations.

A hollow dot marks editorial or disputed dating. A date range enters at its beginning; the full range stays in the detail panel.

A market town did not have to be in the mountains#

Of the 20 selected places, 18 can be placed approximately on the map. Some follow valleys descending from the Carpathians; others lie by the Danube. This is not a census of every medieval market town.

Each point represents a present-day locality or identified site, rather than a surveyed medieval town boundary. Tap a point to see what its source establishes.

Do the mountain crossings explain them?#

Câmpulung and the Brăila road are named in the 1368 trade privilege. The 1413 privilege names Rucăr and Dâmbovița, while its fish tariff also includes Târgșor and Târgoviște. Șerban Papacostea examines these texts in his 2018 study, pages 428–430.

The crossings connect Transylvanian centres with the lands south of the mountains. The symbols indicate crossing areas and known customs places; they do not trace a surveyed medieval road.

The texts establish trading connections. They do not establish that every town originated because of a crossing.

Did the Danube bring people and goods together?#

Brăila enters the 1368 privilege through the road bearing its name. At Calafat, a 1424 act confirms customs, and the 1480 act explicitly connects them with a market. At Floci, a 1467 act names fishing waters, fish customs, a town councillor and officials (DRH B I, nos. 53, 172 and 131).

These records concern exchange and the administration of revenues. They provide no calculation of boats, trade volume or population.

The river explains part of the distribution through functions documented at particular places.

Did the ruler’s presence make a town?#

Selected acts were issued at Argeș in 1369, Giurgiu in 1409, Târgoviște in 1418, Gherghița in 1453 and Bucharest in 1459. A square marks this evidence: the chancery worked there on the act’s date (DRH B I, nos. 3, 35, 42, 110 and 118).

Laurențiu Rădvan describes relations between princely power and urban communities in his study of Wallachian town estates, pages 163–165. Town estates and property held by townspeople had different arrangements. An act issued in a place cannot replace this evidence about its community.

The court is a connection to examine, rather than an urban foundation certificate.

Did a customs post already mean a town?#

For Slatina, the sources used place the customs reference in 1368 or 1369. Its dot stays hollow and the difference is explained in the inventory. At Calafat, 56 calendar years separate the customs confirmation in 1424 from the 1480 wording that associates it with a market.

Dan II’s 1431 order addresses market towns and customs places together. Its list does not entitle us to declare every customs post a town. Nor do we know when a place’s function changed between two acts.

Read the function named by the act, as well as the place-name.

Did they gather around salt and mills?#

The 1388 charter for Cozia names a mill at Râmnic and one within the bounds of Pitești. A 1421 act includes a salt mine at Ocna de Sus. For Târgul Jiului, an act dated by the editors to 1429–1430 confirms mills (DRH B I, nos. 9, 49 and 64).

These are geographically located economic activities. We have no comparable production totals, workforce counts or complete map of mills and salt mines. Ocna de Sus uses its historical identification with the Ocnele Mari area; both location precision and urban status remain limited.

Resources offer a possible explanation. This selection cannot measure their importance.

Where are the towns that are no longer towns?#

Today’s town names are not a sufficient list. Floci, Târgșor and Gherghița appear in the 1431 act. Romania’s archaeological register records the Floci site at Piua Petrii (93655.02) and medieval town houses at Gherghița (133438.01).

A map made only from present-day towns would lose these comparisons. For the Săcuieni market town and Târgul Gilort, we do not fix an exact point: reading the document and identifying the site are separate checks.

Disappearance from the present-day urban network does not erase the medieval evidence.

Or do we see the places the records preserved?#

Many records come from grants to monasteries: mills, customs, vineyards and land. On pages 164–165 of his study of town estates, Rădvan notes that evidence before the late sixteenth century is scarce and largely preserved through such grants.

A place may be older than its selected record. A surviving series of acts may make one town more visible than another. An absent dot does not establish an absence of trade.

Keep the distribution of documents distinct from the distribution of people.

How well can we compare the evidence?#

The rings compare the checked records selected for this page: their count or the span from earliest to latest. They do not count every surviving act for each town. Total documentary coverage remains unknown for every place.

A single selected record does not mean a town is poorly documented across every archive. A long span does not establish continuous activity. A question mark means identification or direct reading is incomplete; the detail panel explains why.

Change the measure, filter verification status and choose a place. In the inventory, “View records and sources” opens each record and its precise reference.

In 1431, a list puts them in one network#

Argeș, Câmpulung, Târgoviște, Târgșor, Săcuieni, Gherghița, Brăila, Buzău and Floci are named together in the same princely instruction. It concerns trade with Brașov and customs collection, rather than describing a state boundary (DRH B I, no. 69).

The connections between places are better documented than the precise courses of the roads. The map therefore keeps the rivers and relief without joining towns by lines that would resemble surveyed routes.

Later in the records does not mean later on the ground#

Pitești was named through its bounds in 1388. DRH’s editors date the act with explicit town wording to 1 April 1510–1511; Sacerdoțeanu uses 1510. The records’ years are 122–123 years apart. They do not tell us when the settlement became a town.

The opening question therefore has several local answers: crossing, market, revenue, resource and power. None of these connections explains every place on its own.