Medieval towns were not organized on a grid or with avenues radiating symmetrically from a center. They were organized theologically, divided up according to the Seven Virtues, or the Twelve Apostles, or the Ten Commandments. Their labyrinthine streets were designed to teach spiritual lessons.
I get a little thrill when I learn tidbits like that, but where does the thrill come from? There is some vertigo in it: the dizzying sense that my world is more precarious than it seems, like standing on a fragile bridge with nothing, but nothing, stretching far, far below.
It's also the thrill of encountering a world other than mine. History is a bore to many, but history well told is as exciting as an absorbing fiction. It's like handling the gizmos of science fiction or meeting the beasts of fantasy. It's a world of delights all the more delicious because it is my world, younger.
And it's the thrill of the future, because if the world was once very different, it will be yet again.
Leithart, Peter. “Delightful History.” Touchstone Mag. March/April 2012:
6. Print.