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The civic center, or agora as it was known in the ancient Greek world, served as the site not only for trade and commerce, but also for administrative, legislative, judicial, social, and religious activities.

The location of markets in the agora was convenient for city dwellers, vendors bringing goods by road or water, and officials responsible for overseeing the markets. Vendors sold from temporary wooden booths in the open air marketplace or from rented shops in covered colonnades known as stoas.

The forum, counterpart in imperial Rome to the agora, likewise served as the principal place of commerce. The marketplaces of antiquity are the predecessors of the great piazzas and squares in Europe, and some have been in continuous use, such as the Piazza Erbe in Verona, Italy, located on the site of a Roman forum.

In addition to civic centers, streets also provided practical locations for markets, since they were already publicly owned and they provided natural boundaries. Usually the street of choice was not only wide enough for both a market and a thoroughfare, but also oriented along a prominent north-south or east-west axis of a grid plan for the convenience of farmers and tradespeople bringing their goods.

Some cities allocated different streets to different markets in order to rationalize trade by type of commodity; and they distributed multiple markets geographically, usually by ward or neighborhood, so that the markets did not compete with each other.

The designation of particular streets and squares for market purposes fostered the development of entire commercial districts. Markets in the Islamic world, known as bazaars or souks, were and still are cities in themselves, encompassing sometimes hundreds of shops and covered streets housing commercial trades and crafts, in addition to warehouses, inns, eating establishments, public baths, and other institutions that support the market.

Market Typologies

The desire to maintain an orderly trading environment and offer protection from the elements has led to a variety of market types through the ages.

The most ubiquitous and consistent type is the open-air marketplace. Usually devoid of permanent structures, it is defined physically by the boundaries of a public square, and in temporal terms by specific market days and hours. Shelter may come from trees or from awnings, umbrellas, and other temporary fixtures provided by vendors.

Street markets share similar kinds of boundaries and definitions with the open-air marketplace, although they tend to assume a more linear form.

Beyond the boundaries of the marketplace are street vendors, whose ambulatory privileges permit them to sell staples and ready-made food in restricted places. These markets on the move have developed their own type of "structures" necessitated by their mobility and the absence of permanent facilities.

Public markets may also operate on an open ground floor of a public building, such as a courthouse or town hall. This form has its origins in medieval Europe, where a combined town hall and market was designed for trading on an open, arcaded ground floor, above which stood one or more stories for administration of the local government. In this type of structure, marketing is secondary to the main purpose of the building.

The freestanding shed is the most common type of market structure, and one that lends itself well to location in a street or square. The shed has been a standard market type throughout the world since antiquity. Open or partially closed, it consists of arches, columns, or piers supporting a low pitched gable roof, sometimes with projecting eaves to increase the amount of covered trading space.

Sheds provide minimal protection from the elements for the least cost and can be erected quickly relative to more substantial structures. Sometimes they are built as a string of separate structures that allow for cross traffic and for separating the sale of food types, as in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Charleston, South Carolina; or they might take the form of colonnades arranged in a square around an open court — a style with antique origins and one that is still popular in the Hispanic world.   >>>

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SUBSCRIPTION SAMPLE The iron-and-glass Les Halles market in Paris was designed by Victor Baltard and Felix-Emmanuel Callet in the mid-19th century. Photo: Library of Congress Merchants peddled their wares from stalls in the Les Halles market before it was demolished in 1971. Photo: Library of Congress Les Halles section drawings. Image: Library of Congress Les Halles elevation drawing. Image: Library of Congress London's Covent Garden Market was redesigned by Charles Fowler from 1828 to 1830. Image: Library of Congress Engraving of the open-air Covent Garden Market circa 1720, well before Fowler converted the site to a built complex of shops and arcades. Image: Sutton Nichols/ LOC Open-air market in Bethlehem, circa 1898 to 1914. Photo: Library of Congress Public Markets by Helen Tangires, a Norton/ Library of Congress Visual Sourcebook. Image: W.W. Norton Extra Large Image   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.