Mapping the towns of Europe: The European towns in Braun & Hogenberg’s Town Atlas, 1572-1617

Abstract

The Civitates orbis terrarum or the “Braun & Hogenberg”, published in six volumes in Cologne between 1572 and 1617, is the most famous of the early town atlases. Although it had no comparable precedent, it immediately answered a great public demand, because social, political and economic life at that time was concentrated in the cities. Apart from that, the pictorial style of the plans and views appealed very much to the uneducated public.Each of the six volumes is a distinct entity, containing plans of towns of the whole of Europe (and sometimes also of towns outside Europe). When a more recent plan of a town was acquired, it was included in one of the later volumes without changing the contents of the earlier volume. In fact, the contents of a volume has never been changed at all. The authors of the work are Georg Braun (Bruin), Frans Hogenberg and Simon van den Neuvel (Novellanus). This paperdiscusses the choice of towns depicted and the distribution of these towns in Europe, the way the towns were depicted (plan, bird’s-eye view, profile, landscape) and the information text given on the towns.