from Hacker News

Interactive maps of Europe in the 19th century

by lorenzfx on 12/21/21, 6:51 PM with 34 comments

  • by dinamic on 12/21/21, 10:03 PM

    10 EUR per tile? Shouldn't such maps be in public domain already?

    It's odd how differently countries treat their cultural heritage. Poland, for example, has published a lot of archival materials in public domain [1]. But this is not the case for Austrian state, which, I guess, owns large fraction of the maps on OP website (Austro-Hungarian Empire). They also charge large sums for using materials from their digital archives.

    [1] https://polona.pl/

  • by iso1210 on 12/21/21, 8:14 PM

    Cool, I've seen higher resolutions of my house (well technically the previous building as it was rebuilt in 1962) from 1890 on https://maps.nls.uk/os/6inch-england-and-wales/, but not the rest of Europe

    I find the map of Greece being written in German (published in Vienna) amusing

    Some interesting things in London

    1) The railway line from Waterloo East to Waterloo main is still in place

    2) No Tower Bridge

    3) The Circle/District/Metropolitain lines are shown

    4) The Olympia-ShepherdsBush-Hammersmith loop is shown

    5) There's a farm north of Shepherds Bush (where White City and the 1908 Olympics were held shortly after)

    6) London in the north generally stops around Zone 2

  • by johnofthesea on 12/21/21, 9:08 PM

    They have also 18th century [1]. Just bit smaller area.

    [1] https://maps.arcanum.com/en/map/europe-18century-firstsurvey...

  • by aardvark179 on 12/21/21, 8:02 PM

    I think the national library of Scotland has a site which allows you to navigate around and select a large set of historic maps. It’s fascinating charting the growth of places like Glasgow over the last couple of centuries.

  • by optymizer on 12/21/21, 9:32 PM

    Curiously enough, it took me a while to find the current Republic of Moldova on this map. The country labeled "Moldavia" as shown is only about 50% of the old Principality of Moldova - from the 14th century until 1812 it used to extend about the same amount to the east - called Basarabia - and well into what this map labels as the Russian empire.

    And while the depicted Moldavia region joined others to create the modern day Romania, its eastern part, Basarabia, only managed to rejoin Romania for 20 years in the late 19th century, and 20 years in the early 20th century, before being annexed yet again, until it finally became the modern Republic of Moldova. In the process, 50% of the native Romanian population was purposefully displaced.

    The side effects of this occupation are very much felt even today. Moldovans still struggle with their national identity. Politicians frequently engage in bike-shedding and love to stir up 'state language' controversy to detract from real economic issues, corruption and poverty. There's enormous Russian influence over the region and interests to keep the country busy being poor and in turmoil.

    These days I fear that if Russia invades Ukraine, they won't stop at the border with the Republic of Moldova, they'll annex Basarabia like they did in 1812 and again in 1940, to restore the 'glorious' Russian empire of the 19th century.

  • by flohofwoe on 12/21/21, 9:32 PM

    Wow, my home region (Ore Mountains in Germany) is basically Google Maps quality down to unique buildings (ok not quite, more like "Google Maps when it was new"). At least judging by the historical buildings that still exist.

  • by lainga on 12/21/21, 7:41 PM

    Are they sure the French map is from 1836? It looks like Paris has its petite ceinture railway (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemin_de_fer_de_Petite_Ceintu...) which was built in the late 1850s.

  • by faebi on 12/21/21, 7:50 PM

    I just found out my neighbor village dropped a letter in it's name in the last 150 years, nice.

  • by davidw on 12/21/21, 9:47 PM

    Interesting to see the bit of Italy north of Trento that was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. They used both the German and Italian names for places where both were in common use, which trails off towards Bozen (Botzen on this map).

    You can see how 'mixed up' things were in the Istria area as well, with lots of Italian names mixed up with Slavic ones.

  • by mtnGoat on 12/21/21, 9:57 PM

    Vienna is almost unrecognizable. I knew they did a lot of work on the Danube over the centuries, but wow.

  • by albertzeyer on 12/21/21, 7:36 PM

    Very nice. Unfortunately the resolution is not that high when you zoom in a bit. Not all details are really visible. (This is not because of bad quality but just because of resolution.)

  • by beardyw on 12/21/21, 9:39 PM

    Richmond park (London) had a lot more roads through it as far as I can see. Many are not even visible now. At least some things have improved.

  • by anotheryou on 12/21/21, 9:27 PM

    I'm missing a bit more info about the sources. What the heck is "Russia (1972)"? (excluding moscow btw)

  • by reedf1 on 12/21/21, 9:22 PM

    Fascinating to see the characteristic layout of my street in London hasn't changed in the slightest!

  • by aksss on 12/22/21, 1:52 AM

    Ordnance survey of Scotland, 1890. Holy crap, the effort represented there.

  • by contingencies on 12/21/21, 11:00 PM

    Prussian cities have no street names. There must be better sources.