[Paul Hansen]

I'm fascinated by historical maps of cities.

In the 17th C. Netherlands, this was an important aspect of cartography and the best cartographers produced them. Perhaps the nicest are those made by Joan Blaeu, in the mid 17th C.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ma...uselang=nl

Blaeu's charts are very accurate. Although some things have changed, the map displayed above can still be used to find your way about that town today! Especially because many buildings (and not only the churches and towers etc.) can be recognized when walking through the streets, which is one of the reasons for my attraction to these maps.

About one century earlier, the earliest city maps were produced by Jacob_van_Deventer. These are more primitive / schematic, but do display more or less the late medieval layout of the cities (with some additions, in some cases).
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ja...categories

I'm familiar with the work of these and other Dutch cartographers, but they did not produce many maps of cities outside the Netherlands (including modern day Belgium).

Now my question is, did cartographers from other countries also produce maps like these? If so, where can I find them?

[Marik C.S.]

To stay close to the Netherlands, the City of Münster in Germany has a couple of nice maps - I chose these as an example because I knew they can be found on Wikipedia, though only on the German page.

Here is one from the Siege of the city in 1657:
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dat...1228024748
And also a regular map from around the same time:
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dat...0522210626

The fasted way to find something will be on the Internet, most large towns or cities will have a history on their town webpage or somewhere else on the web though you will have to search for particular towns.
Also if time and budget allow, visiting those towns and the archives in the town will surely provide you with maps.

[Tristán Zukowski]

When I visited Nürnberg, I purchased a nice print of a "map" of the city from the Nürnberg Chronicle. The map was created by, I believe, Wilhelm Pleydenwurff (son of Hans Pleydenwurff). Here is an image I found with cursory google search:



Cheers,
TZ

[Paul Hansen]

Thanks! The 2nd plan of Munster is quite interesting.

In the Netherlands, the old stone walls were usually replaced by earthen fortifications, but in Munster they seem to just have added earthworks to the stone walls...

The same happened apparently at Bern, according to this map from 1638.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/MerianBern.jpg

[Christopher Lee]

http://historic-cities.huji.ac.il/historic_cities.html

[David Huggins]

Certainly there was a cartographer working abut the same time who produced similair maps in England his name escapes me at present but he did map my home town of Kingston upon Hull, which was also a walled City and an important Royal Arsenal (William of Orange landed here when he accepted the invitation to rule the country) I'll see if I can hunt down his name and perhaps the map the www.

best
Dave