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Maps and plans documenting Prague as a whole (the Prague townhood – the so-called four historical towns of Prague as well as the subsequently expanding city), its individual neighbourhoods and even small areas within its borders are parts of collections of many institutions and have not yet been explored in their entirety. The aim of the present database is to bridge this conspicuous gap in researching the history of Prague.
The site List of maps provides a chronological overview of the most significant plans. For entering the system, please contact: historickyatlas@gmail.com
The beginnings of interest in old plans of Prague date to the 19th century. An expert publication, comparable with the monographs on maps and plans of major European cities, has, however, been hitherto lacking. A brief outline is provided by the article published by Eva Semotanová (Prague – the Town, Space and Society in Cartographic Representation, Historická demografie 18, 1990, pp. 247–273). The mere rest is unpublished works (Gustav Hofmann, Tomáš Hokův) and the monograph by Jan Hofman (Obraz barokní Prahy: plán Josepha Daniela Hubera 1769 /“The Picture of the Baroque Prague: Plan by Joseph Daniel Huber“/, Praha 1944), which does primarily discuss the plan of Prague issued by Josef Daniel Huber, but its initial chapters solidly summarize Prague cartography. An array of old maps and plans of Prague can also be found in the book by Vilém Lorenc, devoted to the New Town of Prague (Nové Město pražské /“New Town of Prague“/, Praha 1973). In addition, several plans of Prague came out as separate commented editions, providing manuscript plans of Prague including its three neighbourhoods.
In the mid-1890s, the “Bohemian Society of Geography” (Česká společnost zeměvědná) assumed pushing through the rescue of old maps and establishing an extensive central map collection. Its initiative resonated with the similar efforts aimed at rescuing maps as they later surfaced in, e.g., the appeal of the IX Geographers’ Congress, held in 1908 in Geneva. The calls asking to voluntarily hand in old maps or at least have them inventoried, however, more or less initially failed, and the only large collection thus remained to be the one kept by the Museum of the Bohemian Kingdom.
Basic information on the maps of the Czech lands, available at the turn of the 20th century, were drawn from the writings by the Jesuit Bernardin Erber, whose unfinished treatise of 1760 critically dealt with the oeuvre of Bohuslav Balbín, the introduction to the first volume of “Topografie” by Jaroslav Schaller, the treatise by Josef Dobrovský included in the “Materialien” by Joseph Anton Riegger, and the works by the statistician and geographer, Josef Erben, and František Dvorský.
The guidebook of Prague by Julius Max Schottky, the chapters on the Prague vistas forming part of the book of František Xaver Harlas, and the few brief articles published, most often, in the “Časopis společnosti přátel starožitností českých” and the “Památky archeologické” provided information on some Prague plans and vistas. The probably first Czech attempt at thorough exploration of the genre of vista, made by Jan Quirin Jahn in 1794, merely survived in the form of a manuscript (it must be noted that the genre in his view also included town plans).
One of the responses to the appeal of the “Bohemian Society of Geography” was the inventory of plans of Prague, compiled by the archive keeper Václav Vojtíšek.Being first published in magazines, it finally came out as a brochure in 1912 (Staré plány pražské /“Old plans of Prague“/, Praha 1912). Vojtíšek’s apparently deep insight to the contents of the contemporary institutions testifies that he succeeded to extract the most from the available Prague collections and archives. The otherwise comprehensive work, however, slightly suffers from the fact that its author merely mentions the surviving titles via examples instead of providing their complete list. In addition, the narrow focus on Prague libraries and collections totally omits military surveys and cadastral maps as well as the entire body of the Vienna-held plans issued for either military or other purposes. The selected arrangement follows geographically chronological order (although without registers.). The inventory, containing 134 items, is divided to seven chapters according to the individual parts of Prague and is listed in chronological order in the framework of each. Although Vojtíšek was aware that his work was incomplete, his book was the only publicly accessible support in studying and using old plans of Prague for many decades.
In 1951, Gustav Hofmann discussed his dissertation, entitled Monumenta Cartographica Pragae. Příspěvek k historické topografii města Prahy se zřetelem k vývoji českého zeměměřičství /“Cartographica Pragae. A Contribution to the Historical Topography of Prague, with Regard to the Development of Czech Surveying“/, at Charles University. His work, however, has never been published as a whole. Hofmann pursued “as complete inventory of old Prague plans as possible, which can be found especially in Prague archives and museums”, and dealt with Vojtíšek’s inventory in the sense of new discoveries, the balance of losses resulting from the 1945 fire of the municipal archives, and with Jan Hofman’s treatise Obraz barokní Prahy. As compared to Hofman, he approached the subject with more high sight and set the development of Prague plans – with the knowledge of the works by Karel Kuchař and the edition “Monumenta cartographica Bohemiae” – to the context of the development of cartographic renderings of the Czech lands. He at the same time took into account both official – i.e. civil (cadastral) maps and maps issued for military purposes, and private maps. Hofman’s Chronologický soupis plánů /“Chronological Inventory of Plans“/ numbers 263 entries and registers old plans from almost ten institutions; it, however, lacks many collections containing manuscript plans and the author was not familiar with the efforts at registers of maps and plans coordinated by Zdeněk Wirth and František Roubík. He neither knew in detail the issue of cadastres, military surveys and descriptions of landscape.
Karel Kuchař Kuchař in 1964 wrote a short, dense, but more or less popularization treatise about the development of Prague cartography. It formed part of a miscellany of texts on Prague aimed at teachers (Staré plány pražské /“Old plans of Prague“/, in: Antonín Lippert – Antonín Bendl – Jaromír Janka (edd.), Praha: Sborník statí pro učitele, Praha 1964, pp. 50–56). The forty-year old Vojtíšek’s register is only little updated here and the author invites the readers to cooperate, because the “Institute of Geography of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences” (Geografický ústav ČSAV) reportedly attempted at an inventory of plans in the mid-1960s. The fates of that project are, however, unknown.
The hitherto single more extensive inventory of maps and plans of Prague – although limited to the 19th century – was published by Václav Hlavsa in 1974 (Plány města Prahy a okolí 1801–1918 /“Plans of Prague and its surroundings 1801–1918“/, Sborník archivních prací 24, 1974, s. 137–259). The author resolved to process a period, which both Václav Vojtíšek and Gustav Hofmann had omitted in their respective works. The main reason was that the number of the surviving plans dramatically increased after 1800 (the inventory lists 1,290 entries). Hlavsa in the introduction highlighted the exceptional position of plans in the framework of sources for researching the history of cities, especially the progressing urbanization. The more Prague lacks an inventory, which would include the period between the 17th and 20th centuries.