In southeastern Switzerland, right at the little corner where France and Italy butt up against it, there's a city on Lake Geneva called LaZone.

And for a very long time, they've been maintaining a rare ancient tradition.

Yes, the Olympic Committee headquarters are there, but that's not the tradition I'm talking about.

No, this one happens more regularly. Daily, in fact, you see every night, beginning at 10pm, a lone figure wearing a wide black hat climbs the 153 stone steps that lead up to the top of the cathedral, looks out on the city that surrounds it, and then calls out the hour.

And they've been doing it every night for 616 years.

It's a relic of another era, an artifact that has somehow held on, a bit of the Middle Ages, alive and well in our modern world.

Once, communities all over Europe used to have a night watchman, but there are only about 60 left today across nine countries.

Still, places like LaZone have kept at it. In fact, in August of 2020, the torch was passed to a new generation, 27-year-old Cassandra Burdaz.

And yes, she is the first woman to hold the role in over 6 centuries.

As I said before, it's an ancient tradition. The night watchman was originally tasked with protecting their city by watching out for fires, crime, bad weather, or other unexpected dangers.

Today, though, they mostly announced the time. All their other roles have been usurped by modern technology.

And because it's still here, we can see how much our world has changed, how the relative safety we enjoyed today would have seemed impossible just a few centuries before.

How a lack of systems and technology left people feeling adrift in a sea of fear and danger, and how folklore could often make the situation so much worse.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is lore.

Context is everything. The setting and players and rules of a story are what give momentum so that the action can drive home.

So, to understand the journey I want to take you on, we need to first understand the road. And I mean that literally.

Obviously, most of us have a rough understanding that the city of London is an ancient one. But for today's purposes, we just need to go back about two centuries to the early parts of the 1800s.

And there we would find an ancient street, heading east from London.

It was once, many centuries ago, known as the road that passed by the red cliffs of the Thames, but over time that red cliff highway became the rat cliff highway.

And now, on most maps and tongues, it's just the highway. But in 1811, it was also something else. It was a major artery through the poorest part of the city.

And a hotbed of theft, assault, and general danger for those passing along it.

But of course, it was also home to thousands, as well as a business center.

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