This is not the first time that Dipylon, a non-profit company, has been exploring topography and the built environment in collaboration with history, information technology and cartography. However, until now, the scientific group that makes their research freely available on the Internet has mainly used archaeological material. So we wondered why this time they turned to the Maps of Attica (Karten von Attika), a work of the 19th century.

“Because the Maps of Attica is an institution, a rich and multifaceted work that has hitherto not been so well known to the public and insufficiently studied, although it retains unique elements both for Attic antiquities and for topography,” replies the philologist and member Dipylos Evi Sembos “The fact that it has been ported to a digital mapping platform puts Attica Maps in an era of digital humanities making the most of modern technology, mainly geographic information systems (GIS) and web mapping. At the same time, it makes it easier access and search for all”.

NTUA professor of architecture and academic Manolis Korres noted that Maps “has never been surpassed, even as a general cartographic work, let alone thematic maps of ancient remains and traces.” It was a multi-year work, the main purpose of which was the establishment of the German Archaeological Institute in Athens in 1874. historian and archaeologist Ernst Curtius and geodesist, cartographer and head of the cartographic department of the General Staff of the Prussian Army Johann Kaupert. The German philologist Curtius, who first came to Othonic Greece as a young student, was destined to become a great lover of the country and develop into a scholarly researcher of classical education, combining the interests and activities of a philologist, historian and geographer.

The final work includes a series of 26+2 map sheets that cover a large area of ​​the Attic countryside, bounded by Parnita to the north and Eleusis to the west. An integral component of the Maps is the accompanying explanatory text, the editor-in-chief of which was the archaeologist and philologist Arthur Milheffer. It contains important archaeological descriptions of the remains marked on the map sheets, as well as information about the 19th century Attic countryside, which must have been lost in the 20th and 21st centuries due to changes in land use culminating in major public works (Attica). Odos, Eleftherios Venizelos Airport, Olympiacos Games, 2004).

This excellent source of information on the archeology and natural environment of Attica has been edited by Dipylon to digitalize the Maps of Attica (dipylon-kartenvonattika.org). The project is mainly addressed to researchers (archaeologists, topographers, historians) who want to travel around 19th century Attica and see exactly the traces of the past (monuments, plumbing, settlements, fortifications) and compare them with the maps of the modern city.