First off, a disclaimer: ‘Medieval’ is a bit of stretch because we can go up to 17th century Golden Era Antwerp as inspiration.
I want to make a small port/harbour town for D&D. Instead of just going at it, I’d like to have a better understanding of what makes a port or harbour.
This lead to questions like:
I’m mostly looking for sources like maps or historical paintings, but (architectural) documentation or (personal) insights are definitely welcome as well!
Many thanks!
While much more can always be said, please, please keep the harbor clean and not to discard the ballast of the ship into the water, as /u/terminus-trantor and I wrote respectively before in: "Dirty Jobs" and When and where did the first major port or harbour dredging operations take place? What vessels and equipment were used?!
Concerning the location of early medieval ports, /u/Libertat and I also posted something before respectively in: Arthurian age port/dock towns? and Why did most North Sea ports develop inland?, but this was not always the case in Later Middle Ages (how to manage the sedimentation became more and more problematic as the average ship size as well as the draft increased - that might at least partly have been why Brugge was almost abandoned (adds/ corrects:) as a supra-regional economic center in the end of the Middle Ages.).
Anyway, check the documentary on Brugge (especially its canal networks) would offer you some ideas on what later medieval waterfront looked like - including some wooden craneworks to unload the ship:
[Added]: As for the topography of later medieval Mediterranean Ports, the following previous posts might also be useful:
If you also need some more visual inspirations, google "Die Deutsche Hanse (1/2): Eine heimliche Supermacht (2010/11)".
Seeing that a lot of impressive ports have already been mentioned, I'll go with a more modest one, but of undoubted importance in the history of the World: Palos, in Andalucía, South of Spain. The name may not ring a bell or sound familiar to a lot of people, but the port of Palos is the place from where Columbus set sail on August 3rd 1492, on the famous voyage in which he sailed the ocean blue.
The port was itself relatively modest in size, but of great importance nonetheless. From that village came plenty of highly capable seafarers like the Pinzón brothers (Martín Alonso Pinzón, Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, and Francisco Martín Pinzón) without whose collaboration the expedition would not have been possible, and a good deal of others like Gonzalo de Stúñiga, Diego Rodríguez Prieto, or Pedro de Velasco also known as Pedro Vázquez de la Frontera.
Palos was situated in a natural arm of the river Tinto, in the firth of Huelva, so there was no need to actually build a dock. This arm of the river was deep enough to house caravels, carracks, and other relatively heavy ships of the time, especially capable for the Atlantic navigation, the speciality of the zone. There are documented attacks by sailors from Palos against Portuguese and English ships as far as the cape of Aguer close to the Canary Islands, the Azores Islands, and Galicia.
The most important part of the port was the main building, a large rectangular shaped construction, divided into three sections: the alota, the alfar, and the tavern.
The alota was the customs offices, where merchandises would be declared, inspected, taxed, and temporarily housed. The alota is very much accredited in the primary sources as having had an annex tavern or inn.
The tavern was annex to the customs house, and it served both as waiting room where to be while the administrative businesses are being conducted, and also a hall where merchants would meet and negotiate their wares. It also had a couple of separate houses, which were the inn. The tavern was run on an administrative concession basis, which is you pay the administration for the right of operating the business whose ownership belongs to the general administration. This concession included the inn and the ovens.
Lastly, the alfar was a large section consisting of twelve ovens or furnaces where lime was processed, but there were also a number of ovens that archaeology has proven to be for tiles, roof tiles, and also bread.
Close to the main building was the main fountain also known as la Fontanilla. Its waters came from a nearby source, which provided fresh water in abundance, and it was the usual place where ships took their water from before departure.
There was also a shipyard in the vicinity of the port, but it has not been found, and will probably never be found, as its structures were made of wood, which is a material that does not stand well the passage of time.
This famous port of Palos is being excavated by the University of Huelva, as it was affected by a landslide in the early 16th century, which buried the whole structure and affected the surrounding territory.
I will insert an image here from the 17th century, more precisely from the Atlas del Rey Planeta, by the Portuguese cartographer Pedro Teixeira (I'm sure my friend u/terminus-trantor is very much familiar with his atlas), where you can see the Firth of Huelva, and also the bay of Cádiz, which was an important portuary city as well. If you want more images from the Atlas, search for Cod Min 46 in the website of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, and you will find plenty.
https://digital.onb.ac.at/rep/osd/?10DD8306
In this video (in Spanish) from Arqueo Huelva you have good reconstructions of the elements from the port of Palos.