Winkelmarkt

“The Winkelmarkt sausages are widely renowned as the finest in Marienburg, which makes them the finest in the world, and there’s nothing like eating one in a bun with a smear of Bretonnian mustard.”

The Winkelmarkt is one of the larger wards in Marienburg and is home to the city’s lower middle class. Much of its commerce involves the boat-building trade, but there’s also a thriving foodstuff trade - Winkelmarkt is known for its delicious sausages. Caught between the appalling wretchedness of the Doodkanaal to the south, and the declining ports of the Suiddock, Winkelmarkt slides inexorably towards poverty as the ward decays and the more successful types flee to the northern
reaches of the city. Locals do their best to maintain their homes, but the signs of decay are everywhere, from the rotting wood, missing shingles, and the growing mounds of rubbish filling the
alleys.

As a ward, Winkelmarkt is more crowded than anywhere else. Outside of the main thoroughfares, the streets are so cramped that not even wagons can navigate these corridors. Buildings often share sidewalls, and many are built on top of older buildings, such that most structures have an almost ramshackle appearance, sagging into one another and leaning at uncomfortable angles.

“A jumble of buildings higher and narrower than any Ras’d ever seen, jostling for space like the people swarming around them, without a single patch of open land to be seen. Some seemed to be tottering on the brink of the waterway and a few were even built out over it on pilings, as though their owners had roofed over a wharf.”
“He paused in the middle of the bridge, in a narrow space between two tiny houses which had been built partly on the roadway and partly over the edge. There were several similar structures choking the thoroughfare, a mixture of shops, homes and some makeshift wooden stalls between them.”