Storia di un mercato. La commercializzazione nelle campagne medievali (Arona, secoli XI-XV)

This article reconstructs the long-term development of the rural market of Arona, on Lake Maggiore, from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, drawing on monastic charters, statutes, toll registers, tax-farming contracts, and notarial records. It shows how an early fair-based and partly urban-oriented marketplace, controlled by the monastery of Saints Felino and Gratiniano, evolved during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries into a regular weekly market integrated into dense regional networks. Growth was driven less by Milanese merchants or long-distance trade than by rural producers, traders, and local elites, who also managed toll revenues and reinvested profits locally. The case highlights both continuity in commercial expansion and a major shift from urban-centred exchanges to horizontal rural connections, questioning simple links between market growth, toll reduction, and the number of newly founded markets.