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Rare Plan of Jerusalem by Its Official Architect & Engineer
Finely constructed map of Jerusalem with 18 inset plans of holy sites including churches and mosques.
There are several lettered or numbered keys, a colored guide to conventional signs, three scale bars (in meters, stades, and yards), and a population table by religion and ethnicity.
The map looks at both the most important ancient buildings and locations, as well as important modern places.
A number of legends identify important Muslim and Christian points of interest.
Ermete Pierotti
In 1858, the Italian Ermete Pierotti, a former Captain in the Corps of Royal Piedmontese Army Engineers, was appointed architect and engineer of Jerusalem by the Ottoman governor. This gave him the opportunity to explore various places in the city, including the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount), something which hardly any non-Muslims had done at the time.
In 1864, Pierotti published in London a book titled Jerusalem Explored. His theories, admittedly not presented in a scholarly way, differed widely from those of eminent representatives of the current Victorian establishment, who launched a violent attack against him, first for an alleged breach of copyright, and then by making public a document revealing some embarrassing aspects of his years in the Piedmontese army.
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