Abstract
Abstract. The Mátra Mts has been one of the most frequented tourist destinations since the second half of the 19th century. This area – the highest mountain range in Hungary – offers a wide variety of free-time activities, geographical and cultural values. Because of these attractions, the tourism importance of the Mátra Mts has been recognised relatively early. The first tourist association was established in 1877 by Kolos Hanák and István Széky. They published the ‘Mátra Guide’ in the same year and reissued it in 1897 with minor revisions. This publication presents the natural-cultural values and the tourism infrastructure of the surrounding area. They also describe interesting hiking routes all around the Mátra. Although the most important sights were illustrated, no cartographic representation was published. In this study we processed the content of the book: every localizable site and tourism facility were visualised applying GIS techniques. A base map of relief, watercourses, road network and settlements were edited using the 2nd military survey topographic maps of Habsburg Empire (to present former conditions), the 1933 ‘Mátra’ hiking map and hillshading (generated from SRTM). The digitized tourism elements from the book were visualised on this ‘historical hiking map’ using Leaflet. As the final online map is available to everybody, the early condition and infrastructure of tourism can be easily examined. This work contributes to the visual heritage preservation of the Mátra Mts: it may strengthen the knowledge on tourism history and digital cartographic solutions.
Highlights
In Hungary, the Mátra Mts is one of the most frequented tourist attractions
Besides the adventures offered by the natural environment, the surroundings of the Mátra presents a great variety of cultural values too
The concept of our ‘historic hiking map’ is to present the geographical and tourism situation of the Mátra Mts at the end of the 19th century – as no tourist map representations were issued at that time
Summary
In Hungary, the Mátra Mts is one of the most frequented tourist attractions. For those, who are interested in active recreation, this region has been one of the best places in the country. After 1877, Kolos Hanák started his promotional and ‘explorational’ work in the area and published a tourist guide about the mountains. In this book, he wrote about the natural diversity, for example, post-volcanic activities, spas, unique parts of the mountains, natural wildlife, and cultural values, ethnic groups, castles (ruins), wine culture, and other geographical factors. We present the processing of this guide and the workflow of reconstructing a hiking map in GIS software (QGIS) – based on the data published by Hanák. For this purpose, we used topographic and hiking maps from that era for topographic base data. Can be the basis of other research or present new solutions in editing traditional maps in a GIS environment
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