In the 1590s, the merchant elite who ran Elizabethan Exeter gave Guildhall this new classical portico - statement architecture for the hub of civic power. The Mayor and Chamber sat here, and the building also functioned as a courtroom, a prison and a fire station. Find out more in three free audio trails, including Elizabeth and Willliam's 'Dissolution and Dissent' and Joan Redwood's 'Wives, Widows and Workers'.

If you were too old or infirm to work in the 16th century, you might find yourself here, the almshouse for the 'impotent poor'. Donations sustained it - usually a few coins, though one wealthy widow left enough cash in her will for one thousand loaves of bread a year. Next door was the house of a canon, or cathedral cleric. You can still spot the remains of his fireplace and oven in the ruins. Find out more in Joan Redwood's 'Wives, Widows and Workers' free audio trail, set in 1587.

On a midsummer's day in the 1500s, this green was host to 500 men, sweating in full armour, armed with longbows and, later, muskets. Just outside the old city walls, it was the site of the annual muster, the inspection of Exeter's civic militia. In peacetime this was a social event, with music and beer. But under Elizabeth I it became a more stern assessment of the city's readiness for war. Find out more in Thomas Greenwood's 'Politics, Profit and Prayer' free audio trail, set in 1588.

There's plenty to see inside the gothic masterpiece of Exeter Cathedral, but before you enter take in the space in front. Standing here in Tudor Exeter you would have been surrounded by the city's dead: unmarked graves for most, gravestones for the better off. Gated and locked up at night, it was a solemn place, but also one where animals roamed, bonfires were lit, games were played and traders sold their wares. Find out more in Thomas Greenwood's 'Politics, Profit and Prayer' free audio trail.

If you go inside St Olave's, you might spot this stone panel, now built into the tower wall behind the pulpit. Originally an altarpiece, it survived the Reformation stripping of the altars, which swept through St Olave's in the 1550s. Possibly it was hidden, only to be uncovered much later during restoration work. Historians think it represents the crowning of Christ with thorns. Find out more in Elizabeth and William's 'Dissolution and Dissent' free audio trail, set in 1536.

If you made your fortune in sixteenth-century Exeter, chances are you made it in wool. At the height of its success, the city produced 1,000 pieces of cloth a day, 25% of English production. This made Tuckers Hall, home of the Guild of Weavers, Tuckers and Shearman, a prestige building. As well as the hub of the wool trade, it doubled as a chapel - but the Reformation put paid to that in the 1540s. Find out more in Elizabeth and William's 'Dissolution and Dissent' free audio trail.

Long before it became a cemetery in the 1830s, St Bartholomew's was Friernhay, where you would have seen cloth hanging on the racks represented on John Hooker's Elizabethan map. Wool manufacturing turned Exeter into a kind of sprawling factory. After the wool was woven, it was stretched here, then trimmed before being shipped across Europe. Ultimately it was made into bodices, hose and other clothes. Find out more in Elizabeth and William's 'Dissolution and Dissent' audio trail, set in 1536.

In February 1536, Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries arrived in Exeter. The target: St Nicholas Priory, a wealthy monastery of Benedictine monks. But it didn't go as planned. A crowd of stone-throwing protesters fended off the king's agents and barricaded themselves in the church. Find out more about the Priory and its fate in two free audio trails: Elizabeth and William's 'Dissolution and Dissent' and Joan Redwood's 'Wives, Widows and Workers'.

A glass of sack wine to warm the blood? The White Hart, still going strong, was the place for it. This was one of Elizabethan Exeter's more respectable inns. Less respectable were alehouses, where you could treat yourself to a pint of extra-strength Leg Lifter or Dagger Ale. Every watering hole, though, had to have a sign outside by the 1580s, and a lantern at the door. Find out more in Thomas Greenwood's 'Politics, Profit and Prayer' free audio trail, set in 1588.

This statue of Elizabeth I was the nearest thing to meeting the 'renowned virgin Queen' that most of Exeter's inhabitants ever came. From 1591 they would have seen her on the High Street near St Stephen's Bow, presiding over one of the city's fresh water fountains. She's now among the artefacts on show in the Underground Passages, the medieval tunnels that brought drinking water into the city. Find out more in Joan Redwood's 'Wives, Widows and Workers' free audio trail.