Free Fairs
Some fairs were free; others charged tolls and impositions. At free fairs, traders, whether natives of the kingdom or foreigners, were allowed to enter the kingdom, and were under royal protection while travelling to and returning from the fair. The traders, their agents, and their goods were exempt from all duties and impositions, tolls and servitudes; merchants going to or coming from the fair could not be arrested, or have their goods stopped.
Such fairs (especially those of the Mediterranean region and some inland regions, particularly Germany), were extremely important in the commerce of Europe. The most famous were those of:
- The Champagne fairs in Champagne and Brie regions of France in the Middle Ages
- The Frankfurt Book Fair remains the most important fair in international publishing, as it has been since at least the 17th century.
- Archangel in Arkhangelsk Oblast), Russia
- Banská Bystrica, Slovakia (Radvanský jarmok)
- Beauclaire, Languedoc, (France)
- Munich, Oktoberfest, (Germany)
- Frankfurt, Frankfurt Book Fair, (Germany)
- Guibray, Normandy, (France)
- Havana (Cuba)
- Plovdiv, (Bulgaria)
- Poznań (Poznań International Fair), (Poland)
- Leipzig (Leipzig Trade Fair), (Germany)
- Lyon, (France)
- Milan, Fiera di Senigaglia
- Rome, Porta Portese
- Novi, in the Milanese region of northern Italy
- Riga, (Latvia)
- St. Germain, at Paris, (France)
- Sweden and Uppsala, the Disting
- Portobelo, (Panama)
- Veracruz, (Mexico)
Read more about this topic: Fair
Famous quotes containing the word free:
“For myself I found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. The laborer’s day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the other.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)