A word from the Art Historians: Perpignan:

As art historians we value many objects and sites that Münzer and his contemporaries would have taken for granted. Altarpieces in churches, for example, would have been part of the furniture unless they were brand new or of precious materials, or if they had some sort of special religious reference. There is, for example, a carved 15th century retable of the Virgin in the church of St. John the Baptist that I, as a 15th century specialist find interesting. If Münzer even visited this church, he never writes about it, much less its ornamentation. And even if he were there, retables were generally covered by curtains unless mass was being said at the high altar or chapel.

Also, Perpignan was a major stopping place for the eastern branch of pilgrims' route to Santiago de Compostela. By the 15th century, this pilgrimage route was far less vital than it had been in centuries past--Rome was more important now. Münzer never mentions Perpignan or any of the other pilgrimage towns that he would later visit in western Spain as such, and his only citation of Santiago in connection with the pilgrimage at all was a disparaging one when he describes the city's permanent citizens: "the people are so dirty—they have many pigs that they sell at a very cheaply—and so lazy that they only concern themselves minimally with the cultivation of the land, and live in general from their earnings from the pilgrims."

You could say that the narrow streets of the old part of Perpignan still wind in their convoluted way as they did in Münzer's day, though the street names and many of the old buildings have been modernized. Distinctive to the region are construction methods and the wooden shutters.

Pictures: (1) Porch of St. Jacques; the saint of Santiago de Compostela. The present church on this site was begun in the 14th century. (2) Detail of facade of the Casa Sanxo, a cloth-merchant's mansion begun in the early 16th century. It's type of stone work is typical of earlier medieval Perpignan architecture; (3) Retable of the Virgin, Dominican Chapel, late 15th century.