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Abstract

The large city map of Cologne was created in 1570-1571 by Arnold Mercator (1537-1587), the son of the famous globe builder Gerhard Mercator, and is the first city map of the Free Imperial City based on exact surveying. Due to its format of 110 × 173 cm, it shows the town with unprecedented accuracy. On two vertical stripes on the left and right, many Roman antiquities, the so-called Antiquitates Coloniae, are depicted and provided with inscriptions, measurements, and provenance. Thus, the map is the first comprehensive written and pictorial printed source on Cologne’s ancient works of art and architecture. The historiographical focus of the map was significantly influenced by the political and humanistic interests of the Cologne councillors, who also owned most of these Antiquitates. The complex design of the urban topography, as well as the additional elaborate pictorial and textual elements, render it one of the most cartographically sophisticated and at the same time most aesthetically appealing city maps of the early modern period. Besides the description and interpretation of the map and its cartographic process, this article discusses the antiquarian interests of its creator and its patrons. The main purpose of the map was to make the long and glorious history of COLONIA AGRIPPINA and its inhabitants visible and tangible in the urban topography, and hence be an instrument for gaining knowledge.