Hundreds of maps created before 1850 can now be browsed and downloaded for free online thanks to Hungary’s National Széchényi Library in Budapest. The initiative aims to make this extensive and valuable collection available to educators, researchers and anyone else interested in world history.
Thanks to the National Széchényi Library, a database mainly containing 18th- and 17th-century Hungarian and foreign maps are now available free of charge. Almost a thousand maps have been posted up on a site called Földabrosz, but the collection is still being updated. The oldest piece is a historical map made in 1614 depicting Ancient Greece. The digitialised maps found in the complex search engine are available in good-quality and royalty-free downloadable format.
In Hungarian, the resource has been categorised by ‘Historic’, ‘Military’, ‘City’, ‘Maritime’ and ‘General’ maps, also broken down by geographical region – section titles can be reasonably easily translated while original map titles are generally in German or French. Intricately detailed bibliographic data for each is in Hungarian.
