City Plan: Tessmere#

Interactive street plan for tessmere. Enable JavaScript to explore it.

Using the plan. Drag to move, and zoom with the mouse wheel, the + and − buttons, or a pinch. Names come in as you zoom, each set lettered to read at the same size on screen:

Whole city: the harbour, the districts and the Duskwood.
About 2½ times: main streets and the great buildings.
About 6 times: the longer streets and the smaller places.
About 12 times: the name of nearly every street.

The ⤢ button fills the screen. North is up, and the scale bar bottom left is always true.

The city at a glance#


What it is	The capital of the Tessmere Republic, "The walled republic." (33:38) It is the largest of the three free Oreth coast states.
People	3.8 million, "the largest city on the coast" (33:32). "Proud, crowded" (33:38). The Republic holds 29.0 million (33:36). About 40,000 runaways a year still come down the Underground Roads (32:176).
Where	"The northern coast: the Greywall, the yards, the capital" (32:121). The harbour is one of the coast's "Drowned river mouths" (32:129). The coast ranges fall "steeply to the sea" (32:128), and "the coast faces east" (32:50).
Climate	6 °C in the coldest month, 24 °C in the warmest, 1,100 mm of rain a year (32:141). There is sea fog, and in summer "yellow-wind dust blowing down from the Imperial interior" (32:136).
The flag	"a grey wall with an open gate; a white moon": "The Greywall, and the gate that is never shut to a runaway" (32:51). The anthem is The Open Gate (32:55).
Speech	Orethi "without the rank-honorifics. Dropping them is the oldest political act on the coast." (32:76) The greeting is "Door's open." and the reply "And the lamp's lit." (32:42)
On the plan	The sheet is 44 × 36 km. About 294 km² is built up, roughly 13,000 people to the square kilometre. 433 km² of the hills is still farmed, and the Duskwood covers 298 km². The plan shows 4,366 streets, about 4,980 km of them. 4,220 have names, which is every street longer than 80 m.

The harbour, the walls and the gate#

The harbour is a drowned river mouth that runs some 18 km inland from the sea. In the plan it is 1.5 km wide at the mouth and narrows to half a kilometre at its head, where the river comes down out of the ranges.
The Old Wall. "Tessmere's walls hold." in the Burning of the Beaches, in the 1390s (32:90), and Tessmere's defenders "Held the walls" (32:234). The plan draws the walled old city on the harbour's south shore, the wall 8.3 km round.
The Open Gate. The flag's open gate is "the gate that is never shut to a runaway" (32:51). The plan makes it the landward gate of the Old Wall, where the Refuge Road comes down from the coast ranges. The Refuge Office, which "Registers runaways as free" (33:257), and a Refuge House (32:286) stand just inside it.
The Greywall. The canon's Greywall is "The fortified line facing Coastwatch" (33:109), which the Atlas puts 181 km north-west. It is not on this sheet.

The districts#

District	What is there	Its streets are named for
The Old City	Within the Old Wall: the Senate of 180 senators (canon, 33:34), with the Burning Tapestry, 60 m long (33:202); the Open Gate, the Refuge Office and a Refuge House; the Lamp Theatre, where Nine Days "has run at Tessmere every night since" it opened (33:206)	the First Consuls of Tessmere since 1398 (32:186–202), by their whole names, since a Shore person "calls a stranger by name" (32:266): Pieter Ruel Street, Jana Holt Street, Senna Tey Lane, Pieter Voss Lane
The Harbour	The quays of the harbour's south shore, and the Line trade's hulls	the harbour: Wharf Street, Pier Street, Net Road, Chandler Lane
The Yards	The Tessmere yards: "Duskwood and steel; hulls for the Line trade" (33:148). The Harbour Guard, the coast's joint navy (canon, 33:112). Homeguard's Tessmere patrol squadron (canon, 48:94). The Guild yard of the Free Banner Guild's coast banners and the Corridor Pennon (canon, 50:119).	the shipwright's trade: Hull Street, Keel Street, Caulk Lane, Slipway Lane
Northside	Across the harbour: the Tessmere Academy (canon, 32:295) and, on the hill, the mast of Lamp Radio, the refuge broadcasts	the refuge: Door Street, Hearth Road, Threshold Lane, Knock Street, Harbourlight Lane
The Landing	The beaches south of the city. Tessmere claims the Western Landing came ashore here in AL 541.	the beaches and the Burning: First Ashore Street, Beacon Fire Street, Shingle Lane, Dune Street
The New Town	The planned town on the plateau west of the Old Wall, round Tessmere Station on the Shore Line	numbered, First Street to Thirtieth Street, crossed by roads named for the coast's towns: Aldport Road
Southside	The city south of the Old Wall	the towns and cantons of the three Shores: Fennick Street, Tollis Lane, Wendle Way, Stellan Lane
The Duskwood	"Duskwood on the northern slopes" (32:131), native forest cut for the yards: "Duskwood timber	Tessmere

Where the city builds upward#

The Station towers stand round Tessmere Station in the New Town, about 300 of them.
The Harbour towers, about 70, stand on the quays east of the Old Wall.
What stays low. Nothing tall stands inside the Old Wall.

On the plan the towers show as dark footprints in blocks built almost to the street.

Getting around#

The Shore Line, "from Northgate to Aldport along the coast: the one railway" (33:164). It crosses the harbour upstream of the Old Wall and stops at Tessmere Station.
The roads:
- the Northgate road runs north along the coast to Northgate, Tessmere's border town;
- the Kelsby road runs south to Kelsby;
- the Refuge Road comes down from the coast ranges to the Open Gate.
The Ria Bridge and the Quay cross and line the harbour.
Air. "Tessmere and Stellan airports; flights to Aletheia, Saltline and Castaly" (33:166). The plan puts Tessmere Airport on the plateau to the south-west.

Landmarks#

Canon places are marked canon. Their position on the plan is a proposal unless the text gives it.

Place	Where on the plan	Note
The Senate (canon)	The Old City	"180 senators elected every four years" (33:34). The death penalty's abolition "was the first law the Tessmere Senate passed in 1398" (33:82), and the Senate passed the Refuge Law in 1881 (32:176). First Consul Ilse Varro has held office since 2311 (33:33).
The Burning Tapestry (canon)	In the Senate	"60 m long" (33:202).
The Refuge Office (canon)	By the Open Gate	(33:257)
The Tessmere Academy (canon)	Northside	(32:295)
The Tessmere yards (canon)	The Yards	(33:148)
The Harbour Guard (canon)	The Yards, at the harbour mouth	The coast's joint navy: "12,000; 34 hulls" (33:112).
The Guild yard (canon)	The Yards	(50:119)
Tessmere Airport (canon)	The plateau, south-west	(33:166)

How the streets are named#

streets are often numbered;
famous people, leaders above all, get streets, and those streets sit together;
an estate takes a theme, such as flowers;
many streets keep the name of whoever first laid the road;
some streets simply stop at a field whose owner never sold, and the suburbs have their cul-de-sacs.

In Tessmere the rules take this form:

The leaders' streets sit together. The First Consuls fill the Old City round the Senate, by their whole names, with no titles: "No honorifics, no ranks." (33:219)
The New Town is numbered, First Street to Thirtieth Street.
The old lanes of the hills keep their founders' names. They are the coast's own family names, many shared with the Imperium (32:188): Dunstan's Lane, Lind's Lane, Doral's Lane.
The old villages keep their own streets: Chapel Lane, Lamp Lane, Boat Lane, Net End. The villages are Stonybrook, Brackenby, Thornleigh, Longacre and Fernly.
Estates were built on the fields that sold, each with a theme:
- flowers (Lavender Way, Daisy Court);
- trees (Cedar Close, Walnut Close);
- birds (Swallow Road, Linnet Way);
- stones (Topaz Road, Quartz Way);
- herbs (Angelica Way);
- Kethra's native life (Tidehound Way, Shaleback Court).
Fields whose owners never sold are still farmed, among the estates.
Every street longer than 80 m has a name: 4,220 of 4,366. A name is used once in the city. The estates may repeat a name found far off, never within 6 km or in the same locality.

The names avoid everything the naming rules and the canon forbid:

Nothing is taken from Earth's places or history (05:266).
No new name uses the crowded families: "-gate", "-mere", "-combe", "Salt-", "Grey-" and "Hollow-".
First Consuls of the Varro and Brennan families have no streets, because the canon's near-identical groups crowd them. Ilse Varro, in office, has none either.