The Hungarian Atlas of Historic Towns: Local Variations on a European Theme

The European Atlas of Historic Towns is one of the longest-running serial projects on history in Europe. Initiated in 1968 and taken up by 18 countries so far, it has produced atlases of more than 460 smaller or larger towns following a theoretically uniform plan. A new wave of interest in participating swept across East-Central Europe after 1989, the latest element of which was the joining of Hungary in 2004 and the publication of its first atlas (Sopron) in print in 2010. My presentation will, besides introducing the production and use of these atlases as research tools, also discuss the perspectives of this enterprise in the digital revolution of mapping.