The Merian map of Paris (French: plan de Merian) was created in 1615 by
Matthäus Merian Matthäus is a given name or surname. Notable people with the name include:
;Surname
* Lothar Matthäus, (born 1961), German former football player and manager
;Given name
* Matthäus Aurogallus, Professor of Hebrew at the University of Wittenbe ...
, the map presents a "
bird's eye view
A bird's-eye view is an elevated view of an object or location from a very steep viewing angle, creating a perspective as if the observer were a bird in flight looking downwards. Bird's-eye views can be an aerial photograph, but also a dr ...
" looking
east
East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth.
Etymology
As in other languages, the word is formed from the fac ...
with a scale of about 1 to 7,000. It originally consisted of two engraved plates (50 x 37 cm each) with the left and right halves of the map and was printed with 2 columns of portraits (each 50 x 13 cm) on the left and right sides of the respective map halves. The entire assembly was 50 x 101.5 cm.
[Boutier 2007, pp. 120–122.]
At the top, a banner with the title: "LE PLAN DE LA VILLE, CITE, VNIVERSITE ET FAVX-BOVRGS DE PARIS AVEC LA DESCRIPTION DE SON ANTIQVITE ET SINGVLIARITES" ("Map of the
town
A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world.
Origin and use
The word "town" shares an ori ...
,
city
A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...
,
university
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States ...
and
suburbs with the description of its antiquity and particularities").
In the upper left corner of the map, between the
Château de Vincennes and the
Marets du Temple, are the
coat of arms of France
A coat typically is an outer garment for the upper body as worn by either gender for warmth or fashion. Coats typically have long sleeves and are open down the front and closing by means of buttons, zippers, hook-and-loop fasteners, toggles, ...
and
Navarre, encircled by the necklaces of the
Orders of the Holy Spirit and
of Saint Michael to just its right, the coat of arms of Paris (a ship on a river) surrounded by a
crown of laurel leaves.
The portraits on the left, top to bottom are: the king, courtiers, nobles and merchants, peasants and commoners; on the right: the queen, ladies of the court, noble and bourgeois women, common women.
[
In the lower left of the map, beneath the farm of the Grange Batellière, one can read these four lines of verse:
On the right of the poem is ]inscribed
{{unreferenced, date=August 2012
An inscribed triangle of a circle
In geometry, an inscribed planar shape or solid is one that is enclosed by and "fits snugly" inside another geometric shape or solid. To say that "figure F is inscribed in figu ...
the name of the author of the map: Matheus Merian Basiliensis fecit ("fecit" = "did" in Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
).
At the bottom of the map, there is an ornament with a large compass rose
A compass rose, sometimes called a wind rose, rose of the winds or compass star, is a figure on a compass, map, nautical chart, or monument used to display the orientation of the cardinal directions (north, east, south, and west) and their i ...
placed in the middle of the River Seine
)
, mouth_location = Le Havre/Honfleur
, mouth_coordinates =
, mouth_elevation =
, progression =
, river_system = Seine basin
, basin_size =
, tributaries_left = Yonne, Loing, Eure, Risle
, tributarie ...
.
The Merian map was frequently used as the basis of subsequent maps, including those of Visscher (1618), Melchior Tavernier
Melchior Tavernier (1594 – May 1665) was a French engraver, printmaker and print publisher.
Heritage, early life, and training
He was the son of Gabriel II Tavernier (1566–1607), an engraver, who in 1573 moved with his father Gabriel I Tav ...
(ca. 1625–1635), Jacob van der Heyden (1630), Christophe Tassin (1634), Dubarle (ca. 1641), Giacomo Lauro (ca. 1642), and Martin Zeiler (1655). In turn, the map of Tassin served as the source of numerous later maps.[
]
References
;Notes
;Sources
*Boutier, Jean (2007). ''Les Plans de Paris'', second edition, pp. 120–122. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France. .
Further reading
*
External links
{{Commons category-inline, Merian plan of Paris
Maps of Paris
History of Paris
Maps of the history of France
Urban planning in France
1615 works
17th-century maps and globes