Ponts Couverts Quarter: Place du Marché-aux-Cochons-de-Lait

The Place du Marché-aux-Cochons-de-Lait (Suckling Pig Market Square) is a small medieval square on Strasbourg's Grande Île, in the Grand Est region of France, a short walk west of the cathedral. As its name indicates, it was the site of the market where piglets were sold, in a district of narrow streets that served the city's food trade in the late Middle Ages. The square is surrounded by half-timbered houses of the 15th and 16th centuries with overhanging storeys, carved beams and steep roofs. Its best-known building is the Maison du Corbeau (Raven House), dated 1528, a Renaissance building with a wooden gallery and a carved stepped gable that served as the customs house and an inn on the route to the river. The house has since been restored. The square lies within the UNESCO-listed old town and is maintained under its heritage regulations. It is open at all times, without charge, and the quiet atmosphere contrasts with the busier cathedral square nearby. Visitors can include it on a walk to the Rue du Maroquin, the Place du Marché-Gayot and the lane leading to the Ill, and it lies a few minutes from the Petite France quarter and the covered bridges. The square is typical of the small market places of the medieval city, where each trade had its own site: fish, meat, poultry and livestock were sold in separate streets and squares, and several of their names, such as Vieux-Marché-aux-Poissons and Marché-aux-Cochons-de-Lait, survive today. The narrow plan, the steep roofs, the jettied upper floors and the dense timber framing are characteristic of the Rhenish town house, and the surviving buildings give a more intimate picture of everyday commercial life than the grand monuments nearby. Because the square is small, it is best visited as part of a longer walk through the old town rather than as a destination in itself, and its quiet corners are often used by visitors to pause between the cathedral and the canals.