Urban History, 43, 4 (2016) C  Cambridge University Press 2015 doi:10.1017/S0963926815000619 First published online 7 August 2015 The great fire of medieval Valencia (1447) CARMEL FERRAGUD and JUAN VICENTE GARC ´ IA MARSILLA ∗ Institut d’Hist ` oria de la Medicina i de la Ci` encia ‘L ´ opez Pi ˜ nero’, University of Valencia, Palau de Cerver´ o, Plac ¸a Cisneros 4, 46003 Valencia, Spain Art History Department, University of Valencia, Avda. Blasco Ib´ a˜ nez 28, 46010 Valencia, Spain abstract: In March 1447, a great fire broke out in Valencia, caused by a former member of the municipal government. This fire destroyed many houses and craft workshops around the Market Square, the economic centre of the city. The municipal government had to compensate the citizens, who had lost everything, and restore everyday life in the area. A versatile Italian watchmaker living in Valencia was chosen to supervise the rehabilitation of the area. Under his direction, the debris was removed. Then after a conscious campaign of urban planning aimed at eliminating any traces of the old Islamic city, the streets were reconstructed according to the norms of the western city. On 16 March 1447, when night fell and the city of Valencia was getting ready for bed, a terrifying fire broke out in the Market Square (Figure 1). With unusual strength and speed, the flames began devouring everything, jumping from one street to another and making houses, shops and workshops burn like torches. It was a nightmarish spectacle that must have reminded many of the images of Hell that they had seen on altarpieces. Helpless, the people of Valencia appealed to God and His saints, bringing out in procession the monstrances from all their parish churches, so that the Corpus Christi might protect them and put an end to this horror. However, for seven long hours the fire spread, out of control, along the main commercial arteries of the city. In a small area, less than two hectares, but one in which a large part of the city’s craftsmen were crowded together, 46 houses were destroyed, and all the tables of the fish market too; there were also 10 deaths and a number of injured. The local authorities lost no time in attributing the change in the direction of the wind that made it possible to put out the fire to the Virgin Mary. ∗ The present article forms part of different research programmes given financial suport by Ministerio de Econom´ ıa y Competitividad of the Spanish government: Garc´ ıa Marsilla HAR2011-281718; Ferragud FFI2011-29117-C02 (2012-15) and FFI2014-53050-C5-3-P (2015- 18), co-financed with FEDER funds of the European Union. terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926815000619 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 18.206.13.133, on 23 May 2020 at 18:09:00, subject to the Cambridge Core