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Finely colored example of this highly detailed map of the Isle de France and the environs of Paris.
This large, linen-backed folding map, engraved by Coutans and Picquet around 1800, shows Paris and its suburbs at an exceptional scale. Every element of the landscape is minutely rendered: a street grid inside the walls of the various cities, the individual houses in surrounding villages, and the royal woods of Saint-Germain, Versailles, and the Bois de Boulogne, each shaded in deep green with their formal rides and star-shaped clearings. Rivers and canals are washed in blue and labeled with locks, towpaths, and millraces, while hachures give the hills of the Seine and Marne valleys real relief. Post roads, lanes, and even footpaths thread the countryside, with milestones, ferry crossings, and toll bars carefully noted. Field boundaries, vineyards, and market gardens crowd the margins of every commune, offering a near-cadastral look at the agrarian belt that ringed the capital on the eve of Napoleon’s rise.
Beyond its beauty, the map is prized for the precision it brought to French cartography during the Consulate. Compiled from the latest military surveys, it served planners and engineers who were modernizing roads, canals, and defenses in and around Paris.
