ABSTRACT
The commercial cities of early modern Europe contained buildings that were used specifically by merchants engaged in international trade and finance. These sites often played key roles in gathering information, acquiring new forms of knowledge, learning languages and dealing in money, credit and expensive consumer goods; sometimes justice was administered there as well. They were focal points in their respective cities, and contributed to their identity and their political and social life. 1 These venues were thus more than buildings: they were institutions. What I would like to suggest here is that these institutions followed in the steps of the first public banks (from the fifteenth century onwards) and that they corresponded to the increasing importance of the cities and their political roles. 2
