Medieval Towns — their Business and Btdldings 499 were no amphitheaters or public baths as in the Roman cities. The streets were often mere alleys over which the jutting stories of the high houses almost met. The high, thick wall that sur- rounded it prevented its extending easily and rapidly as our cities do nowadays (see headpiece and Figs. 179, 208). Fig. 178. A Castle with a Village below it A village was pretty sure to grow up near the castle of a powerful lord and might gradually become a large town All towns outside of Italy were small in the eleventh and Townsmen twelfth centuries, and, like the manors on which they had serfr^ ^ grown up, they had little commerce as yet with the outside world. They produced almost all that- their inhabitants needed except the farm products which came from the neighboring country. There was likely to be little expansion as long as the
