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Antique engraved view of Palmanova, Italy, by Matthaus Merian.
The map has exceptional detail within the fortified city walls, showing all buildings pictorially.
Palmanova, in the northeastern Italian region of Friuli, is a fascinating symmetrically-planned city. Founded in 1593 by the Venetian Republic, it was built to commemorate the Battle of Lepanto twenty years earlier. Designed as a fortress in a nine-pointed star, it was planned as having several stages of fortifications. The innermost ring took thirty years to complete, and the outer lines wouldn't be finished until the Napoleonic era.
The city, built on the humanist ideals of the Renaissance, proved to be a complete failure. It was unable to be self-sustaining and the Venetian government was forced to offer criminals pardons and plots of land to move there.
Mathaus Merian (1593-1650) was the father of engraver Matthäus the Younger, and of the painter, engraver, and naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian. He was born in Basel, Switzerland and trained in engraving in Zurich. After a time in Nancy, Paris and Strasbourg, he settled in Frankfurt. While there, he worked for Johann Theodor de Bry, the publisher and son of the travel writer. In 1617, he married Maria Magdalena de Bry, Johann Theodor’s daughter. In 1623, Merian took over the de Bry publishing house upon the death of his father-in-law. Merian’s best known works are detailed town views which, due to their accuracy and artistry, form a valuable record of European urban life in the first half of the sixteenth century
![[Vercelli] Urbis Vercellensis a Carolo Emmanuele II](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/89098.jpg)
