Debrecen4U April 14, 2025

The Mayor’s Reference Library has been enriched with a 17th-century map depicting Debrecen

A revised edition of a map originally published in 1658, in English, depicting a part of Tiszántúl and Bihar County,  including Debrecen, printed in 1683 was donated to the Mayor’s Manual Library by Lajos Kósa, a member of parliament and former mayor of Debrecen, on the occasion of the city’s day on April 11, 2025.

As Lajos Kósa said on the occasion of the donation, the interesting thing about the hand-coloured copperplate engraving is that the anti-Turkish liberation wars were already underway at that time, and the monarch needed maps that correctly depicted the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary from an administrative point of view. The original map collection, of which this is a part, depicted the country by counties. According to Lajos Kósa, this is perhaps the first map that correctly depicts Debrecen from an administrative point of view. At that time, Hajdú County did not exist, so Debrecen was not the county seat, and Bihar County had Nagyvárad as its center. This map was made in a small number of copies, and it is also interesting that,  since it depicts the period centuries before the river was regulated , River Tisza is extremely winding on it.

On behalf of the city, Mayor László Papp thanked for the gift. As he said, “It is an honour that Lajos Kósa was among the founding donors of the Mayor’s Manual Library, and is constantly monitoring the development of the library. According to László Papp, they will proudly place this map on the wall of the library.

Source and photo credit:debrecen.hu