Trading houses
Build the house of a merchant as it stood in different cultures: the warehouse below, the office with the ledger above, the hoist beam at the top. Choose a Dutch canal house, a Hanseatic house of half-timbering or wood, a Venetian fondaco, a Chinese hong, a Japanese tonya, a han in the souk, a Roman trading office, a Viking house or an Egyptian granary. Choose what the merchant trades: wool, spices, wine, grain, silk or fish. At the bottom you can read how everything is calculated.
Point at a block for the explanation. Click a block to mark it as placed. The side view shows the section at the chosen column, Layer shows the chosen layer from above.
Build plan
Per layer
| Layer | Parts | Blocks |
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A number is the count of blocks of that part in that layer, in the colour of the part. Click a layer to see it from above.
Build tips
- Put crafts together as they were: in a town, smiths, bakers and weavers often had their own street. Think of Smith Lane or Tanners’ Row.
- Every villager profession in Minecraft has its own workstation. A building with the right workstations does double duty when villagers live in it.
3D and layer-by-layer build plan
To Minecraft
Download the trading house as a schematic file and paste it with WorldEdit, or build it with a hologram in Litematica.
How it is calculated
History and fun facts
The trading house: warehouse, office and home
A merchant lived and worked under one roof: the warehouse below with barrels and bales, the office with the ledger above, the loft at the top with a hoist beam. In Bergen German merchants from Lübeck worked from the fourteenth century in the wooden houses of Bryggen, where they traded dried fish from Norway for grain. On the Amsterdam canals almost every merchant’s house had a hoist beam in the gable, so goods went straight from the boat to the loft.
Fondaco, hong and tonya
In Venice the German merchants lived and traded in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, a large trading house around a courtyard; the word fondaco comes from the Arabic funduq, an inn with storage. In Canton the trading houses (hongs) of foreign merchants stood by the river, the Thirteen Factories. In Japan wholesalers (tonya) sat in narrow, deep houses with a stone storehouse (kura) against fire.
Did you know?
- Bryggen in Bergen has been on UNESCO’s World Heritage List since 1979.
- The word ‘bank’ comes from the Italian ‘banco’, the money changer’s table.
- In Minecraft a lectern makes a good ledger: put it in your merchant’s office.
Sources and further reading
Read more about the history here. The links go to museums, archives and heritage organisations outside this site.
- Bryggen (opens in a new tab) UNESCO World Heritage Centre
Description of the Hanseatic wharf in Bergen with its wooden trading houses. - Hanseatic City of Lübeck (opens in a new tab) UNESCO World Heritage Centre
Description of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck with merchant houses and warehouses.
About this tool
With this planner you build a merchant’s house in Minecraft, in the style of the culture you choose. The building has a warehouse, an office with a lectern as ledger and a hoist beam, and you choose what is traded.
You see the build plan layer by layer, a 3D preview and the block list, and you can download the house as a schematic for WorldEdit or Litematica. For a whole trading town, place several houses side by side or combine them with a bazaar, a market and a trading post.
Frequently asked questions
How do I build a merchant house in Minecraft?
Choose a culture, for example the Dutch canal house or the half-timbered Hanseatic house, and choose what the merchant trades. Adjust width, depth and storeys and switch on the hoist beam and the office. Build the walls and roof first, then place the chests, barrels and the lectern from the build plan.
What does a trading house sell?
Six kinds of trade: wool, spices, wine and beer, grain and flour, silk with tea and porcelain, and fish. Each kind has its own chests, barrels and goods in the warehouse, so the house shows what the merchant grew rich on.
Which cultures are there?
Nine: Dutch gabled house, German and English half-timbering, Italian with a stone arch, souk and han, Roman taberna, Japanese machiya, Chinese shophouse, log cabin from the north and Egyptian mud-brick house. Examples include Bryggen, the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the Fugger house, a Chinese hong and Dejima.