Orașul Iași și surprizele Bibliotecii de Stat din Berlin: un plan polonez din 1686 și o versiune germană a planului din 1739
The City of Iași and the Surprises of the Berlin State Library: a Polish Plan From 1686 and a German Version of the Plan from 1739

Summary/Abstract: In this study, we continue our series of research on the plans of the Moldavian capital, Iași. Previously, we examined what we believed to be the oldest map of this city, discovered in the Moscow archives and dating back to 1739. However, the Berlin State Library holds an unidentified plan that includes a sketch of Iași's fortifications as part of a campaign led by a certain „Grand General des armes de Pologne”. Research has indicated that the plan was created during the 1686 military campaign launched by Polish King Jan Sobieski. During this campaign, Iași was occupied for a month in August-September 1686, with a garrison of 1,000 soldiers led by Jan Fryderyk Koszkiel left in the city, tasked with gathering supplies and fortifying the prince's castle along with three large monasteries. For this, he enlisted the help of an engineer named Gourneuille, who is also named on the map and whom we believe is most likely the same as a later engineer, Gourmonville, who worked ten years later for the great hetman Stanisław Jan Jabłonowski (who was actually the „Grand General” mentioned on the plan). The plan is valuable because it highlights several important monasteries, including the Church of St. Nicolae – the seat of the Metropolitan Church at that time, the Old and New White Church (Biserica Albă), and the Golia monastery. The Berlin State Library's collection also includes a German-language map of the city of Iași, created around 1740 by the renowned cartographer Johann Georg Maximilian von Fürstenhoff, who used one of the versions of the Russian plan from 1739. In this study, we compared this map with the aforementioned Russian maps to highlight similarities and differences and to uncover new information about the history of the former capital of Moldavia.

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