Turgot Map of Paris | Hacker News Reader

Turgot Map of Paris

en.wikipedia.org

The parisians will appreciate the countryside starting at the gates of the jardin des tuileries (which by the way is how it is depicted in the game Assassin's Creed Unity, which is a below average game but gives you way to walk freely in a Paris under the revolution, and view many buildings and monuments that have since been destroyed).

I noticed the same. At the time, the Louvre Palace was near the western end of Paris, similar to how the Palace of Westminster was near the western end of London.

Also, the northern wing of the Louvre and most of today's Place du Louvre and Place du Carrousel were still several residential blocks back then. And the Palais des Tuileries (burned down by the Paris Commune in the 1870ies) was still standing...

I wasn't expecting to see so many tall buildings. Even out at the edge, where it turns to farms, and even the farmhouses themselves, the buildings are mostly 3 or 4 stories! At least, if I'm correctly interpreting each horizontal row of windows as a floor of the house.

I've looked at few more areas, and I suppose a lot of the farmhouses are only 2 stories high.

My expectations were based on places with a lot more land, and therefore sprawl (examples of what I'm thinking of below). I do realise that modern Paris is more built up than this, but I didn't realise it would be as close as it is.

What I was expecting: https://www.gettyimages.com/search/2/film?phrase=aerial%20vi...

Fairer comparisons: https://www.gettyimages.com/search/2/film?phrase=aerial%20vi...

I've noticed the same when looking at old Georgian and Victorian maps of London. You get these surprisingly sharp edges between urban and rural. You often have streets lined with quite grand buildings and nothing but fields behind them. It's quite strange when you're used to modern cities that gradually peter out into suburbs.

My guess is it's because at this point the population of cities was growing quickly, but the large scale migration of farm laborers into them hadn't begun in earnest yet. So most of the housing being built at the edges was intended for the expanding merchant classes, who wanted something a bit more impressive, and who also had live in servants. The Georgian terraces of London are typically three or four storeys, with the top storey being rooms with low-ceilings where the servants lived.

It probably has more to do with different administrative areas. Cities used to have different rights. Cities could just not simply expand to external land. The reason was quite simple: the land belonged to someone else. Meanwhile, the city was independent, even if it was the capital of a kingdom (such as Paris, for example).

In Vienna, for example, the city ended behind the belt. As a citizen, you could travel back and forth between the surrounding area and the city, but different laws applied (taxes, marriage, property).

The Viennese enjoyed traveling to the surrounding countryside for leisure (winegrowers had to pay significantly less tax for serving their own products than innkeepers in the city), but the citizens did not want to live there, or there were strict regulations on moving in.

> I wasn't expecting to see so many tall buildings.

Ancient Rome already had lots of tall buildings. https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/curiosities/roman-skyscrapers/

“But where the population is increasing rapidly and the city area is not, this traditional Roman house is disappearing. Due to lack of space, insula grows not outwards but upwards.

Already in the 3rd century BCE, most of these buildings have three floors - and will soon cross this barrier. Insula was supposed to generate profit for the owners- hence they were built very quickly, cheaply and very messily. Collapses or fires in insulae occurred more often than often. Hence the attempt to limit the height of Roman buildings by subsequent emperors, for example, Octavian Augustus (maximum height 70 pes, Roman feet, just over 20 meters; 1 pes = ca 44.5 cm) or Trajan.

After a great fire in Rome, Nero limited its height to 60 pes. These restrictions did not apply in other cities of the empire, hence the surprise of the famous Strabo, that in the mentioned Tire the insulae are almost as impressive as in the capital.”

I printed a 1.5 meter version of this map 10 years ago, it still looks beautiful on my living room wall.

Zoomable HD version

https://zoomviewer.toolforge.org/index.php?f=Turgot%20map%20...

It reminds me of the game MicroMacro

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/318977/micromacro-crime-...

https://boardgamegeek.com/image/7774293/micromacro-crime-cit...

Why is the map apparently oriented with North facing Southeast?

Probably so that what Parisians call the "rive droite" (lit. right shore) is effectively on the right-side of the map.

Medieval maps of Paris were oriented West-East, thus offering the best views of church facades! Note that this is a personal opinion shared as a child with my grandfather after years of family diner in front of his Truschet map.

For sure, there is no connection with "rive-gauche" / "rive-droite", this expression is based on the flow of the Seine, here it would have been the opposite of the map.

Medieval West-East maps on wiki (West on the top, North to the left): - 1530 Braun and Hogenberg engraved map [1] - 1550 Truschet and Hoyau engraved map [2] - 1615 Merian map [3] - also the 1370 Gough Map of Britain [4]

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_de_Braun_et_Hogenberg [2] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_de_Truschet_et_Hoyau [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merian_map_of_Paris [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gough_Map

This map is impressive!

Seems like this guy died right before he publish his masterpiece, what a pity.

That 40kpx x 40kpx scan (800 Megabyte) of that map broke my system. Wow.

I just downloaded and thought maybe 80MB... why is it taking so long... hm

Edit: Made a 30MB png with linear interpolation (because I don't have all day): http://move.rupy.se/file/turgot.png

Here's another map of Paris (this time with interpolation): http://move.rupy.se/file/eau_paris_3.png

one can see the Bastille fortress!

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