Place du Marché Gayot

This guide to Place du Marche Gayot in Strasbourg opens with a 1682 fire that swallowed a corner of the city starting at an inn named for a game bird, leaving behind a scarred lot locals called Cour-Brulee for nearly a century. It follows the prefect who finally cleared the rubble in 1769 and laid out a new market square, and the string of names and trades, poultry, then meat, that followed before the square settled on the name it carries today. You'll hear how it later spent decades as an ordinary car park. Look for the half-timbered facades at numbers twelve, fifteen and twenty-one as you walk through.