Description
C.17th birds eye view of Leipzig, Germany.
From Braun & Hogenberg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum
Translation of text on verso;
True likeness of the highly famed market city of Leipzig in Saxony. In the year 1617.
Leipzig is the capital of the Magravate of Meissen and lies at the confluence of the Elster and the Pleisse. It has two handsome parish churches, two elementary schools, a court of lay assessors and a regional court. A particular embellishment of the city is the university. There is something I must warn students who are thinking of coming here: not long ago a nobleman came to Leipzig and enquired about his cousin, whether he was applying himself assiduously to his studies. A fellow student answered that he was holding his own very well, for among the 1,500 students there was no other who could drink better than he. But this is a bad reputation, and especially unbecoming for a student.
Braun and Hogenberg produced two views of Leipzig; The first plate showed the city in 1570 from a low vantage point, with three horsemen in the left foreground as a reference to the horse market. After receiving market privileges in the year 1165 and awarded imperial trade-fair rights in 1497, the city developed into a leading trade centre.
This second plate, showing how the city had developed 50 years later is based on a drawing by Konrad Knobloch commissioned by the Leipzig City Council.
