Inn at the road along the river

This is a round picture, a copper disc 21 centimetres across, and its subject is the kind of place every journey of the time depended on. Around 1600, goods and people in the Low Countries moved by cart along the roads and by boat along the rivers, and where road and river met an inn was rarely far away. There carters rested their horses, loads were shifted from one to the other, and travellers found a meal and a bed for the night. Brueghel puts his inn on a road running right beside the water, so road and river sit together inside one small circle. The Alte Pinakothek dates the plate to around 1600 to 1602 and shows it in a display case in Cabinet 8. Its frame was made in Munich in the 20th century.