Lucemburgum Urbs eiusdem nominis Ducatus primaria, et Tribunal Supremum...

Perspective view of Luxemboug from east. "In this city is a magnificent Franciscan monastery, whose foundation stone is supposed to have been laid during the time of St Francis. There is also another splendid monastery, which is generally called the minster. From this minster one gradually climbs up to the New Town. For the Old Town lies down below in a deep valley to the left of the cliff and is now considered to be the suburb. For as it was difficult to defend it was gradually found to be better to build the city higher up. ..."  Commentary by Braun.

The right-hand illustration shows the Igel Column (German: Igeler Säule) is a multi-storeyed Roman sandstone column in the municipality of Igel, Trier, Germany, dated to c. 250 AD.

Because of its testimony to the importance of Trier during Roman times, the Igel Column was designated as part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Roman Monuments, Cathedral of St. Peter and Church of Our Lady in Trier in 1986.

The work is included in the fifth volume (1597) of the Civitates Orbis Terrarum, the first atlas devoted exclusively to plans and views of the world's major cities. Printed in six volumes between 1572 and 1617 it was so successful and widespread that several editions translated into Latin, German and French were printed.

This great city atlas, edited by Georg Braun and largely engraved by Franz Hogenberg, eventually contained 546 prospects, bird-eye views and map views of cities from all over the world. Fransz Hogenberg produced the plates for the first four books, and Simon van den Neuwel (Novellanus, active since 1580) those for volumes V and VI.

Georg Braun (1541-1622), a cleric of Cologne, was the principal editor of the work, and was greatly assisted in his project by the close, and continued interest of Abraham Ortelius, whose Theatrum Orbis Terrarum of 1570 was, as a systematic and comprehensive collection of maps of uniform style, the first true atlas. The Civitates, indeed, was intended as a companion for the Theatrum, as indicated by the similarity in the titles and by contemporary references regarding the complementary nature of two works. Nevertheless, the Civitates was designs to be more popular in approach, no doubt because the novelty of a collection of city plans and views represented a more hazardous commercial undertaking than a world atlas, for which there had been a number of successful precedents. Franz Hogenberg (1535-1590) was the son of a Munich engraves who settled in Malines. He engraved most of the plates for Ortelius's Theatrum and the majority of those in the Civitates and may have been responsible for originating the project.

Over a hundred of different artists and cartographers, the most significant of whom was Antwerp artist Georg Hoefnagel (1542-1600), engraved the cooper-plates of the Civitates from drawings. He not only contributed most of the original material for the Spanish and Italian towns but also reworked and modified those of other contributors. After Hoefnagel's death his son Jakob continued the work for the Civitates.

The author set out to depict "non icones et typi urbium," that is, not generic and typified images, "sed urbes ipsae admirabili caelaturae artificio, spectantium oculis subiectae appareant": not intended to allude or idealize but to represent faithfully on paper, to reproduce exactly, and in real time, what the eye sees, as announced in the preface to the first volume of Civitates Orbis Terrarum.

Copperplate engraving with fine hand colour, in very good condition.