People have dodged taxes in every century, but a few societies took it to an architectural level. When governments started charging homeowners based on things like house width, windows, or ground footprint, people responded by redesigning their homes to slip around the rules. The results still shape streets and skylines today.

In Amsterdam, residents were taxed by the width of their facade. Builders made their houses narrow in front and deep in back, which created staircases so tight that moving furniture inside became impossible. The workaround was simple. Attach a roof hook and hoist belongings through the windows. People in Amsterdam still move furniture this way, often lifting it right over the canals.

In 1696, England introduced a “window tax” that charged homeowners by the number of windows in their house. Many families simply bricked them up to avoid paying more. Some even painted fake windows to keep their facades from looking oddly bare.

Several medieval Italian cities taxed buildings by the amount of ground they covered. Height did not matter. Families built upward instead, competing to build the tallest tower on their block. Many of those towers still stand in places like San Gimignano.

Across Europe, these unusual tax rules quietly shaped entire cities. Legislation came and went. The creative solutions outlived it.