The Wide

The primary market and largest civic space in Baldur’s Gate is the Wide, where sellers set up their stalls and put out their wares each day at dawn. Street music and noisy performances are forbidden, and every night the sellers who are not Upper City residents must pack up and leave. Bustling by day, the Wide is desolate at night, except on holidays and when hosting grand celebrations.
By law, all commercial buying and selling not done in a licensed and taxed establishment must be conducted in the Wide, the city’s most prominent civic space and public market. Every morning sees an influx of vendors setting up their stalls and taking deliveries from a small army of porters. Every sunset, vendors cart their unsold wares back out, or pay exorbitantly expensive warehouse storage fees.
In the hours between, the Wide hosts a vibrant, crowded market where fortune-tellers and con artists sit beside dealers hawking spices, fish, furs, perfumes, and every other luxury good to be found across the continent and beyond. Despite its crowds, the Wide is well regulated, the Watch keeping a sharp eye out for pickpockets. Street musicians are forbidden on pain of heavy fines and expulsion from the market, so the Wide proves more subdued than the chaotic markets of the Outer City. Quiet performers, such as puppeteers and sleight-of-hand tricksters, are common.
The Beloved Ranger For years the Wide hosted one of the city’s most cherished landmarks: the Beloved Ranger, a statue of a powerful warrior in plate mail wearing a cheerful grin and cradling a hamster in his hands.  Then one day, the statue was destroyed by a wild surge of magic.  A replacement was commissioned soon after.