RPG Resources of the Day: Two Sites with Hundreds of Real Historical City Maps

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Yesterday’s post of 101 Fantasy City/Town/Village maps made me think about real historical city maps.  I was going to links to many of them (not 101 of them because doing upwards of 101 links in one or even two or three sittings is tedious), but I ended up finding two exceptional websites that include historical city maps.  So instead of linking to many maps, I’ll describe those two sites and link to a few examples from each.

The University of Texas at Austin hosts the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection. It includes many different maps–old and new–from many sources. The maps I focused on are found in their historical maps section.  Note that many of the maps date from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, but that is still before cars became popular and cities had to adjust to vehicles.  Here are some examples:

The second website is even more spectacular because its maps are generally even older and it is focused on city maps. This website hosts a historical city maps. is hosted by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  Below are several examples:

Ack!  Well, I didn’t post 101 links this time, but I think I got over halfway there.  I tried to link to some of the best examples of maps of the more famous cities.  In a few cases (London, Moscow, St. Petersburg) I chose a few maps of each city taken at different times and in different styles.  The Jerusalem link goes to a page with several maps as well.

It is interesting to see how over time map styles evolved.  One aspect in particular is the perspective view.  The older city maps seem to have a perspective as if the artist is looking down on the city from a high hill or similar observation point.  While there may be a few top down maps from the 1600s and earlier, they are rarer.  You can see an example of this by looking at the maps from different volumes of Civitates.  (Although the later volumes that have top-down views are dated in the late 1500s-early 1600s.)

The maps also lose their artististic embellishment over time.  When colored, the older maps’ colors are more vibrant.  The cartographers add artistic elements like ships in the sea or river, people in the foreground observing the city, etc.

One note about copyright: I’m not a copyright lawyer, so look into this on your own (or talk to a copyright lawyer) if this is an issue for you but it is my understanding that most of these maps (certainly all before 1900, but once we get to the 1900s and certainly the 1920s the issue gets murkier) are in the public domain because materials produced before that date generally are in the public domain and so are faithful reproductions. (Again, look into this for yourself if you have reason to do so.)  Copyright law varies from country to country, but there seem to be some international commonalities.  The Texas Perry-Castañeda website does a good job of pointing this out where they say most of the maps are in the public domain, those that aren’t are marked, there is an issue with reproducing government seals that one must be careful of, check into the copyright of maps on other sites that they link to, etc.  However, the Hebrew University website adds a large copyright note to each of its maps that doesn’t match my novice understanding of copyright law.  Perhaps the law differs greatly where the website is hosted, but you should look into this on your own if it is something you need to consider.

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