Eschwege & Fritzlar. [on one sheet]

A fine antique copper engraved sheet with two panoramic views by Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg: Eschwege and Fritzlar. From: 'Civitates Orbis Terrarum'. Liber tertius. Cologne, Gottfried von Kempen, 1581.

ESCHWEGE. COMMENTARY BY BRAUN: "Eschwege is a town in Hesse, which lies on a hill, surrounded by fertile farmland and with the Werra flowing by. Here the woad plant, along with the blue dye that is made from it and which is found a plenty all over Thuringia, is loaded onto boats a mile higher up and transported along the Werra to Minden and then down the Weser, into which the Werra flows, towards Bremen."
Eschwege is seen in bird's-eye perspective looking accross the Werra. A stone bridge leads via the island in the river to the town rising on the opposite shore.
The skyline is punctuated by the landgrave's castle (far right) and several church towers, including the market church of St Dionys and the late Gothic, three-aisled church of St Catherine.
Eschwege was granted its charter in 1326 and from 1433 belonged to the Landgraviate of Hesse. The local cultivation of the dye-yielding woad plant meant that Eschwege developed into a trade town for cloth and woad.

FRITZLAR. COMMENTARY BY BRAUN: "Fritzlar possesses a ring wall with many towers and lies in a countryside of rolling hills. It nevertheless has very fertile farmland, on which cereals, fruit and legumes grow. Vines also flourish there, although the countryside is not known for its wine on the whole. And although Fritzlar lies in Hesse, it belongs to the archbishop of Mainz.
It has consequently had to endure numerous military onslaughts and also the most base treatment from the Dukes of Hesse, as well as from the Saxons, who conquered the city and set fire to it."
Fritzlar is seen from the south in a view overlooking the Eder, which is crossed in the foreground by the stone bridge that helped fuel the town's development.
Inside the ramparts on the left is the Romanesque and Gothic collegiate church of St Peter, erected on the site of the Benedictine monastery founded by St Boniface in AD 724; on the far right lies the Franciscan monastery, founded in the 13th/14th centuries, with its Minorite church.
The former imperial residence was probably built under Charlemagne; over the following centuries it gained in political and economic importance and hosted a number of synods, diets and sovereign assemblies. In the 11th century Fritzlar passed into the possession of the archbishops of Mainz, which led to a multitude of conflicts with the princes of Hesse (Taschen).

The 'Civitates Orbis Terrarum', or the "Braun & Hogenberg", is a six-volume town atlas and the greatest book of town views and plans ever published: 363 engravings, sometimes beautifully colored. It was one of the best-selling works in the last quarter of the 16th century.
Georg Braun wrote the text accompanying the plans and views on the verso. A large number of the plates were engraved after the original drawings of Joris Hoefnagel (1542-1600), who was a professional artist. The first volume was published in Latin in 1572, the sixth volume in 1617. Frans Hogenberg created the tables for volumes I through IV, and Simon van den Neuwel created those for volumes V and VI.
Other contributors were cartographer Daniel Freese, and Heinrich Rantzau. Works by Jacob van Deventer, Sebastian Münster, and Johannes Stumpf were also used. Translations appeared in German and French.

Reference: Van der Krogt 4, #1255; Fauser, #3745, #4306; Taschen, Br. Hog., p.238.