‘Old’ in Old Quarter is a bit confusing, as only small proportion of the buildings here are more than a hundreds years old. So the ‘old’ in Old Quarter more reflected the activities that are carried on it since ancient times. However, the buildings in Old Quarter have interesting architecture too.


Because shops were taxed by the width of frontage on the market, storage and living space moved to the rear. They developed into the long and narrow houses, called tube houses, where small frontage hides very long rooms. Typical measurement for such a tube house is 3 m x 60 m.