Cities Of The Renaissance World

by Michael Swift

The first volume of the Civitates Orbis Terrarum was published in Cologne in 1572. This great city atlas, edited by Georg Braun and largely engraved by Franz Hogenberg, eventually contained 546 prospects, bird's eye views and maps of cities from all over the world. This book chooses 53 maps from Civitates--65 cities in all--from Cuzco in the Americas to Calcutta in the Indies--and interprets them, explaining what can be seen in the 16th century map, and how that differs from today's cities.

Genres: History, Art, Maps

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Redsteve]

An impressive collection of maps taken from Civitates Orbis Terrarum - a six volume atlas of cities (published in Germany between 1572 and 1617). The original contained 546 engravings of the cities of the "known world." The Swift/Konstam book includes color engravings of 65 cities, mostly in Europe, but also some in Africa (Cairo, Alexandria), Asia (Constantinople, Jerusalem, Calicut, Ormus, Canonot, St. George Del Mina), and the Americas (Cuzco, Tenochtitlan). Some are pretty much just paintings of the cities as seem from outside, while others are more conventional "birds eye view) maps; all include heraldic symbols, illustrations of people in local dress, and often local shipping). The 2008 collection is arranged with each chapter beginning with a history of a specific city and a small version of the map with notes about specific features indicating locations, followed by two facing pages of the original map - which is impressive as this is not a small book - measuring 16" by almost 2 feet. The texts with the original maps are in Latin. This book is beautifully done, but I have two issues with it. First, in about half the chapters, the authors continue with the history past the dates of the maps, which I don't feel really adds anything useful. Also, in a perfect world, I would have liked if they'd included a translation of all of the original map notes. Solid 4 stars.

[Chuck]

Anyone who like cartography and Medieval/Renaissance times will love this book. The reprints of the maps from Medieval times a very detailed and fun to poor over. This book also adds extra contextual information for each city, which helps a lot since most of the maps are in other languages such as German and French.

[Maria]

A selection of reproductions with some historical background on each city.