A SPACE BETWEEN EMPIRES

Town plans from Central and South-East Europe and their impact on the knowledge of the urban past

Original sources serve as the foundation for any researcher interested in the past. Archives, libraries, and museums grant us access to written materials, documents, chronicles, memoirs, inscriptions, seals, coins, maps, and more. Each of these conveys valuable information, and by compiling all this data, we can attempt to reconstruct larger or smaller pieces of past events in towns. Although they are not very old, town plans belong to these sources, providing valuable information on the evolution of urban settlements. They may contain hints about the emergence of towns, their organisation, streets, neighborhoods, fortifications, major and minor structures, churches and houses, topography and local hydrography, public works, economic facilities, and much more. In recent decades, there has been an increase in literature about towns based on already known historical plans, and what seemed discoverable in the archives appeared to have already been covered. However, as new town plans in the Romanian area have recently been found in the archives of Vienna and especially Moscow, we are granted the opportunity to return to our origins and a specific question: what new information can old town maps offer? (from the „Introduction”)

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