Manost : Medieval fantasy city

[Mortis]

Hello everyone, this is my first experience in map drawing and I try to draw a map of a huge city, "Manost" a militarist theocracy, more exactly TWO maps of the same city...

The first one will be the official map, and the second one will be shady map. both must contain informations on the city... but I don't know how... to depict, to represent, the several buildings, places, guilds, etc.

There will be several districts :

- One for the temple (yellow) with several temples, guilds of paladins etc.
- One for the government (red) with the courthouse, the siege of gouvernement, several other official buildings
- One for the rich inhabitants (orange) mansions, manor...
- One for the shops (mauve) guild of thiefs, stores,
- One for the port (blue) docks, ships, illegal trafics
- One for the embassies (green) with the siege of the diplomacy, embassies (of course)
- One for the soldiers (gray) the great fort, jails, arcanes tower, watch base...
- One for the poor inhabitants (purple) criminal activilites, access to the gate of the city

I try to do it myself, but... I think it's not really a success...

[Azélor]

The layout reminds me of ancient chinese cities like Chang'an.

The main problem I see is that shops would be evenly spread, not concentrated in a district.
If you have a specialized industry like booksellers, maybe they are located close to each other in clusters, but overall, shops are in every corners of the city.
There might be large public squares open for merchants as well. Either for local or exterior merchants.

Historically, embassies is a recent concept. Countries mostly conducted ad-hoc diplomacy and had no permanent diplomats. They came with messages,m tribute, stayed a few days and left after. This is likely due to the time and cost involved in sending people far away in another country.