Bordeaux Map 1870 City Plan Print - Chartrons, Garonne, Place de la Bourse

The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge's plan of Bordeaux appeared in London again in 1870, a later issue of the highly detailed town plan that the catalog describes as one of the best town plans published in a commercial atlas in the nineteenth century. The sheet carries two large views, one of the Quai des Salinières and one from the Quai des Chartrons, and it is a plan of the river port with its quays and its merchants' quarter. The Society, founded in London in 1826, had issued cheap maps for education, and its plans remained in print for decades after they were first engraved. It shows Bordeaux in 1870, the year the Franco-Prussian War began and the year that the government of national defense later withdrew to the city.

The two views show the Garonne waterfront from two angles, the Quai des Salinières and the Quai des Chartrons, and the plan around them is the street grid of a city that had grown since the 1830s. By 1870 the railway joined Bordeaux to Paris, and the Gare Saint-Jean had opened in 1855, so the river port was no longer only a river port. In February 1871 the National Assembly met in Bordeaux to decide on peace, which gives an 1870 plan of the city an unusual historical weight. The Chartrons remained the quarter of the wine merchants, and the Garonne remained the highway that carried Médoc wine to the sea. The plan therefore shows a commercial port that briefly became the capital of France.

A collector of French history, a wine lover with Bordeaux in the family, or a student of the Franco-Prussian War will find an informative gift here. TheMapVault also lists the same plan from 1832, the earlier issue made under Louis-Philippe, whereas this 1870 sheet is the later one, which belongs to the Bordeaux of the railway and of the National Assembly of 1871. Its 1870 Marseille companion is a plan of the Mediterranean harbor in the same series. Like every print in the collection, it ships unframed and is available in a full range of sizes, from a compact desk piece to a large-format statement print.