Premodern cities were sealed off and rendered dangerous after dark

Evidence

Night begins to fall and more and more people disappear from the streets. No lamps light the impending darkness. The sounds diminish with the light and you are suddenly afraid. For a while, nothing stirs. You can hear the occasional step of the night-watch, patrolling the deserted streets, the occasional cry of the watchman that all is well. You move along. Suddenly you note that a huge gate within the city that had been open earlier in the day is closed and that a whole section of the city has been sealed off. You cannot enter that section for it is walled. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 169

Categorization

• XREF: Contrasts directly with the modern city’s round-the-clock public presence, and pairs with the reader’s urban-anonymity theme: night’s unlit public space becomes genuinely threatening.
• SHARE: The detail that walled-off districts made part of the premodern city physically inaccessible at night would land well with anyone doing premodern urban history.