Leodium. Liege

1612 edition of the Civitates Orbis Terrarum.

The Civitates Orbis Terrarum, also called"Braun & Hogenberg", is the most famous of the early city atlases. The publication consisted of six parts in folio with a total of 363 beautiful engravings depicting plans and views of cities. It fulfilled a broad public demand of the time because the social, political and economic life of the time was concentrated in the cities. Moreover, the pictorial style of the plans and views appealed to the public.

The terrarium Civitates orbis was published in Cologne between 1572 and 1617 and was primarily intended for educated readers. Before the publication of the first volume, only a few maps and city views had been published, mostly in books. In these works, the text was clearly more important than the geographical representations. This urban atlas is due to the clerk Georg Braun from Cologne, who wrote the text (introductions to the six volumes and descriptions of the plates), and the engravers Frans Hogenberg and Simon Novellanus (or van den Neuvel). Many other people were involved in this enterprise, among them the Antwerp artist Joris Hoefnagel and Abraham Ortelius, who provided much of the material that was later engraved by Novellanus and Hogenberg. At least five different printers handled the work between 1572 and 1623, and editions appeared in Latin, German and French.