Announcing a new cartography website, "Historical Maps of the Hapsburg
Empire" or MAPIRE at:

http://mapire.staatsarchiv.at/en/

The site offers a selection of historical maps >from the
Austro-Hungarian Empire geo-referenced with present day maps (on
Google or OpenStreetMap) providing layering technology for researchers
to compare the past with the present.

Completed is the second military survey of Habsburg Empire and in
progress are the first and third surveys and cadastral surveys of
Croatia and Hungary. Project participants are the Austrian State
Archives (Osterreichisches Staatsarchiv,) Arcanum in Budapest.

There were two types of maps >from that time period: the military
surveys (typically scaled 1 to 28.800) and the more detailed cadastral
maps (scaled 1 to 2.880,) with both of them covering the entire
territory. The original manuscript map sheets of the military surveys
can be found in the Austrian National Archives, but cadastral
(extremely details property maps on the town level) are found in
various archives of the successor states. For example, cadastral maps
for the province of Galicia are held the following regional or
historical archives: Krakow, Przemsyl, Rzeszow in Poland and Lviv and
Ternopil in Ukraine. (Examples of Galician cadastral maps can be
found in Gesher Galicia's map room: http://maps.geshergalicia.org)

To use the site, scroll down. When you see the passing selection of
maps, click "complete view" on one that interests you. You can also
scroll further and choose "Complete View" to see the entire Empire in
context, or choose to focus on the following territories:

Bohemia, Bukovina, Coastal Zone, Croatia. Dalmatia, Galicia,
Illyria. Lichtenstein, Lombardy, Modena, Moravia, Parma, Silesia,
Slavonia, Styria, Salzberg, Tyrol, Venice, Vorarlberg

Click on the area and then start zooming in. You can adjust the
"opacity" using the slider bar at the top of the page to switch views
between the historical map layered with the current GIS map. This
feature is very useful for those researching historical place names
that may not show up on current maps.

The Second (also known as Franciscan) Military Survey (1806-1809) has
outstanding quality and while not a cadastral survey, when you zoom in
at the closest range you will be able to view plots of land and
buildings, especially ones detailed along the banks of rivers that ran
through these communities.

Arcanum, based in Budapest, specializes in digitization projects, and
has already covered the entire collection of maps of the City Archives
of Budapest, the hand-written map collection of the Hungarian National
Library, and the cadastral maps of Hungarian Archives and Croatia.

A more thorough explanation of these maps can be found in the
"Digitized Maps of the Habsburg Empire" paper here:

http://mapire.staatsarchiv.at/static/pdf/mkf_booklet.pdf

Or the "Digitizing and Geo-Referencing of the Historical Cadastral
Maps (1856-60) of Hungary" here:

http://www.academia.edu/3614065/Digitizing_and_georeferencing_of_the_historical_cadastral_maps_1856-60_of_Hungary

The MAPIRE site is also available in German and Hungarian.

Pamela Weisberger, Gesher Galicia, pweisberger@...
http://www.geshergalicia.org