The Cloth Hall, by its dimensions, implicitly splits the Market Square into two “halves” – that we name here by convention west and east.

The evolution field visualisation underlines west/east density and ‘knowledge patterns’.
a - possible period of construction
b - artefact’s overall lifetime
c - possible period of demolition/dismantling
d/d’ – confirmed/suspected fire
e - definite morphological transformation
f - definite recurrent transformation
g - unknown results of a confirmed
transformation h – potential transformation
i - artefact identified during archaeological survey
i’ - archaeological remains not clearly attributed to the artefact




This visualisation helps weighing precisely the density of objects on both sides of the Cloth Hall (as well as the overall number of transformations and of alternatives, the durations of life, the temporal patterns for construction and destruction time). Wooden commercial facilities on the west side outnumber by far those on the east side, some emerge earlier in time, their process of decay and demolition stand out as harder to date precisely – in fact activity as such appears as far greater on the west side.

The visualisation can also highlight specific events – here reports of fire are represented as little horizontal red lines, and distributed in time. A spectacular dissymmetry appears between the two sides: a large number of fires on the west side, particularly during the 16th century, only one fire suspected on the east side.