Sex work was an active and regulated part of the Florentine urban economy. Ducal laws required sex workers to register their trade and pay a license fee, decreed where they could live and practice, and also allowed for a central brothel near the Mercato Vecchio. Like all laws, however, these were only as good as their enforcement and the city’s sex workers, known as meretrici, flouted them; some paid an extra fee to have their names kept off the official lists. This map shows the documented residences of Florentine meretrici in 1561 mapped against the streets where their trade was permitted. Notice the concentrations of sex workers around the central brothel area, as well as in the city’s eastern quarter.