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Drawing on both prescriptive sources and private documents, this article explores how well-to-do women occupied urban space at the beginning of the early modern period: it was a matter of negotiating their potential mobility. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, social control over women increased. Their movements within the urban space were precisely codified, assigning them primarily to domestic space, imagined as the site of virtue, work and protection – although in reality it was a place where exchange and circulation took place. Public space on the other hand was increasingly masculinized. Although women were closely monitored by theologians, pastors and public authorities, at least some of them were able to adapt to these limitations and undertake long journeys, out of necessity, thus demonstrating the gap between norms and everyday practice.