At what point in history did we start to identify houses as being a particular number and belonging on a particular street?
If I were to arrive in a western European city in the 15th century, would I be able to ask for directions to a particular house, or would I have to get directions to the street and then just ask around for the person I needed to see.
Apologies if this is a bit of a broad question.
The oldest known example of house numbers are from a specific street in Paris in 1463. This remained however an exception until the 18th century. After 1700, several big cities started using a more systematic numbering; but this was still only done for specific purposes such as collecting taxes, housing soldiers or mapping problematic people like Jews or beggars, rather than general administrative purposes. While these house numbers were initially not positively received by a lot of residents, they started realising their practical usage in the second half of the century. In the early 19th century, Napoleon widely introduced it in all regions that were under French control. For the Netherlands for instance, this was in the year 1806.
Before all of this, there were not even specific street names, at least not in rural area's, but there were neighbourhood names. A village with just a few hundred inhabitants could have several of these, so you'd always know approximately where to be. If you needed to find a specific house, which I suppose occured far less often than today, you could probably just ask anyone for the person you want to see. In pre-modern times, there was a much stronger sense of local community than there is today. However, it was also very common to give names to specific houses, domains and even fields. I don't know to which degree these names were used when asking for directions, though.