Cartographica Helvetica

Summary

Wolfgang Lierz and Uwe Schwarz:

Town map of Cologne by Johann Valentin Reinhardt 1751–1753 and its predecessors from the 16th to the 18th centuries

Cartographica Helvetica 40 (2009) 31–39

Summary:

After Arnold Mercator's large plan of Cologne from 1571 followed Reinhardt's town map in 1752 showing Cologne as it appeared in the Middle Ages, largely unchanged for the past 500 years but before the dramatic topographic changes that took place in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the wake of the secularization beginning in 1802, numerous churches and cloisters were razed. During the middle of the 19th century the city walls were destroyed along the Rhine River, and from 1881 on also those on the other side of Cologne. Despite the loss of this large number of identifiable objects, a successful attempt is made to confirm the repeatedly stated but never substantiated claim that Reinhardt's plan was the first town map of Cologne based on precise surveys.