York offers an interesting English equivalent to Paris and Venice: smaller, more provincial, but with a parallel rise and fall from Roman garrison town to England’s second city and back down to a firmly-established regional centre.

Founded by the Romans in 71 CE, York was taken by the Vikings in 866 and held by them until 1055; it was then conquered by William I, who built a castle in 1068 and burned much of it down in retaliation for three rebellions by the inhabitants at different times between 1068 and 1070. (This seems to have resulted in a genuine famine in 1070-71.) From here, York developed into a genuine trading powerhouse: in 1379, a full two-thirds of all English wool exports passed through the city, and when it attracted the royal court, it rivaled London as a commercial centre.

Of the local laws, a few are particularly noteworthy: it was forbidden to graze cattle within six miles of the city, so that cattle for butchering in the shambles (butchers’ quarter) were fed on hay for fattening, rather than allowing the cows to browse the fields, a practice that would seem to have been entirely motivated by municipal bylaw rather than any genuine agricultural interest. York’s Minster, meanwhile, had a less auspicious architectural history: destroyed by fire in 741, rebuilt, burned down again in 1069, rebuilt again, and damaged a third time in 1127, it was not until the reconstruction commenced in 1220 that it took on the form familiar today, having become the largest cathedral in England (by far) by 1472.

By 1500, other English towns, notably Bristol and Norwich, had overtaken York in terms of trade, but it maintained its position as a regional centre throughout. A nice alternative to the “great capital city” model suggested for Paris and Venice, and arguably the most realistic fictional equivalent to an English provincial town.

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