3-004-095 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

General Map of Courland Province: Showing Postal and Major Roads, Stations and the Distance in Versts between Them, 1820. This 1820 map of Courland Province is from a larger work, Geograficheskii atlas Rossiiskoi imperii, tsarstva Pol'skogo i velikogo kniazhestva Finliandskogo (Geographical atlas of the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Poland, and the Grand Duchy of Finland), containing 60 maps of the Russian Empire. Compiled and engraved by Colonel V.P. Piadyshev, it reflects the detailed mapping carried out by Russian military cartographers in the first quarter of the 19th century. The map shows population centers (four gradations by size), inns, postal stations, roads (two types), state, provincial and district borders, and customs houses. Distances are shown in versts, a Russian measure, now no longer used, equal to 1.07 kilometers. Legends, the index of regional names, and place-names are in Russian and German. The territory depicted on the map roughly corresponds to the southern portion of present-day Latvia.