Although it had no comparable precedent, it immediately answered a great public demand, because social, political and economic life at that time was concentrated in the cities. Apart from that, the pictorial style of the plans and views appealed very much to the uneducated public. Each of the six volumes is a distinct entity, containing plans of towns of the whole of Europe and sometimes also of towns outside Europe. When a more recent plan of a town was acquired, it was included in one of the later volumes without changing the contents of the earlier volume.
In fact, the contents of a volume has never been changed at all. IV: The Town Atlases , in preparation, scheduled for publication late Tooley 1. The number of travellers was greater than ever before in that century, the only exception was the number of pilgrims, which was less than in previous centuries.
Towns were of the most interest to travellers. We should therefore not be at all surprised that while Abraham Ortelius was preparing his atlas with maps of the entire world, work was being done on a publication with a similar systematic depiction and description of all the towns of the world. Ortelius published his atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, in 2. The first part of the town description, the Civitates Orbis Terrarum, came out two years later 3.
Hogenberg was working on both projects simultaneously during that period and, given his close association with Ortelius, it is difficult to believe Braun came up with the original idea.
During his visit to Antwerp in , Braun could have met both Ortelius and Hogenberg and it is possible that the idea for the Theatrum style town atlas was born in conversations between these three men. Contemporary sources regarded both works as mutually complementary.
