Vilniaus miesto planai

ENThe early maps of Vilnius are scattered in various depositories, archives and libraries. It happened because of wars, occupations, changes of governments, restructurisation of institutions under the administration of other states, and a lack of order in the depositories. Quite many valuable cartographic documents, including those from the 19 th and early 20th century, have been lost. The book contains a valuable collection of maps of Vilnius from the 16 th to the first half of the 20th century held by the National Museum of Lithuania, as well as maps held in other depositories in Lithuania and other countries (Poland, Russia, Germany). v\ll in all, 153 maps of Vilnius from the above-mentioned period have been discovered and analysed. The selection is limited to drawn maps of Vilnius, and printed maps are included only in the case if their drawn proto-images or originals are considered lost (e.g., the city’s prospect by the cartographer Georg Braun published in Book 3 of the Atlas of the Cities of the World (Urbium praecipuarum totius mundi) published in Cologne in 1581, Friedrich Getkant’s plan of defensive fortifications of Vilnius from 1648, which was held in the Wroclaw city library, a cyanotype of a plan of the Vilnius fortress built in 1831, and others). Almost all the known maps showing the entire territory of the city, the city with suburbs and environs, or separate large districts and suburbs of the city have been collected. Several rare hand-coloured maps printed in the lithographic technique from the late 19th - early 20th century have been included. A photograph (cat. no. 13, LNM, AFP-4260) of the map ofVilnius of 1794 (cat. no. 13, Kart. Q19083/3) held in the Prussian State Library in Berlin (Preußische Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) before World War II and lost during the war, is published. [...].In the book, maps are divided into four thematic chapters. This kind of division was determined by the nature of the collected material, the reasons for the compilation of maps, and the historical changes in the cartographic practice. In the chapters the maps are arranged chronologically or according to locations. In the first chapter, the cartography of the city ofVilnius spanning three centuries from Brauns prospect published in the 16th century to the cadastral map ofVilnius of 1808 is reflected, and the city’s political history and the improvement of geodetic surveying is discussed. The second chapter is comprised of maps of the city’s suburbs and environs. Territories that once were suburban, private or magisterial folwarks (farms) gradually became part of the urban area. In this chapter maps are presented in the alphabetical order according to the names of suburbs. This helps to emphasize the changes of the suburban development and terrain, and in some cases - e.g. Žvėrynas, - even to show the entire course of the inclusion of a suburb into the urban area. The third chapter of the book is devoted to a rather small but very important and specific area ofVilnius - the territory of the castles. The cartographic collection of this area, which lay on the outskirts of the city and was separated from the old town, is special. Its formation was determined by the changing political circumstances and administration, as well as the city’s development in the second half of the 19th century. The fourth chapter consists of maps representing the projects of urban development. A shift: that took place in the history of the city’s planning in the first quarter of the 19th century along with the practice of compiling long-term plans built the preconditions for collecting the drawings reflecting the replanning of the entire city and its separate districts into a separate group.Depending on the political circumstances, the history of cartography of the city of Vilnius is divided into three periods: the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Russian Empire and the Second Polish Republic (II Rzeczpospolita Polska). [...] In the book the reader will find cartometric data and descriptions of the drawings, the circumstances of their compilation and the historical context presented on the basis of archival sources. The analysis of archival documents revealed what events or circumstances determined the appearance of one or another cartographic document and helped to specify the authorship or dating of some drawings. The research on archival documents was helpful in preparing independent studies on the development of the historical suburbs of Vilnius, transformations of the territory of the castles, land development in Vilnius in the 19th century and the practice of land surveying. [From the publication]