ancient cities

esidential areas stir before settling down for the
night, although their daytime inhabitants might
well be enjoying themselves elsewhere. Wolfgang
Schivelbusch and Joachim Schlör have suggested
that a number of developments came together to
shape the idea of urban nightlife in European cities
from the 1830s onward: the extension of street
lighting, the parallel expansion of commercial and
festive lighting associated with a burgeoning
night-time economy, and the growth of an enormous
curiosity concerning what went on in cities
during the hours of darkness.
Important Contrasts
Cities were dependent on the natural rhythms of
daylight and moonlight until the end of the nineteenth
century. Medieval European cities operated
a curfew, and walkers carried torches after dark to
identify themselves as much as to light their way.
Although the modern city is associated with light,
with street lighting introduced to European cities
in the sixteenth century, it was not until the seventeenth
century that what Schivelbusch calls the
lighting of order became well established in some
large European cities. The establishment of a regular
grid of street lanterns that lit streets (rather
than individuals or buildings) was part of the
policing of the absolutist state, and London retained
the older system into the eighteenth century (much
as it relied on night watchmen until the nineteenth
century).
Street lighting is a key aspect of modernization,
along with the provision of water and other key
services. Although technological developments
play a significant role in the history of nightlife,
particularly the advent of gas and then electric
lighting in the nineteenth century, these did not
necessarily make cities better lit. The reflector
lamps introduced to Paris in the 1760s were much
brighter than the old lanterns, but there were fewer
of them, placed further apart, so the streets became
darker. Gaslights might be bright and modern, but
their waning, flickering light also painted shadows,
as Lynda Nead points out; later, electric arc
lights made adjoining streets lit by gas seem
gloomy.
These geographies of illumination marked and
reproduced social divisions after dark, as they still
do today. International differences can be seen in
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images of the world at night, which show concentrations
of well-lit urban centers in places like
North America, Europe, the North African coast,
and India, compared to gaps in much of sub-Saharan
Africa, despite the fact that it is estimated that
there will be about 300 million city dwellers there
by 2010. Although the history of nightlife has
often been told through the history of illumination,
the link between the two is complicated.
The relationship between lighting and festivity
was well established in the early modern city, and
the illumination of the town’s windows was a
common way of celebrating national success or
political upheaval. Gas and electricity also
encouraged the expansion of commercial lighting:
illuminated shop fronts and interiors, the
gaslights of places of entertainment like London’s
gin palaces in the 1830s, and later the electric
cinema marquees and signs of sites like Times
Square (from 1904) and Piccadilly Circus (1910).
These “bright lights” became synonymous with
city life.
After darkness and light the second most
important characteristic of the night is its contrast
with the day. Arguments persist about the history
of time consciousness, but it is often thought
that modern time-discipline brought a stricter
division of day from night, associated with work
and rest (or pleasure), respectively. Making use of
artificial light, this time-discipline began to make
the working day independent from the hours of
daylight. George Augustus Sala’s Twice Round
the Clock, or The Hours of the Day and Night in
London, published in 1859, begins “READER,
were you ever up all night?” It is organized by the
clock, with a chapter for each hour; this way of
timing and structuring the exploration and representation
of the city would prove to be popular
elsewhere.
Commercial and festive lighting allowed urbanites
to shop, dine, and entertain themselves, but
only as long as the city authorities allowed them to
do so; the length of the night was determined by
state controls over the closing times of entertainment
venues. In 1839, London’s pubs were made
to close between midnight on Saturday and 4 a.m.
on Sunday, and by 1864, English pubs were closed
between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. every day. The privilege
of staying out late was restricted to patrons of
aristocratic sites like eighteenth-century London’s