The Face of the City - Bergen during three centuries
The main elements in the exhibition "The Face of the City, a portrait of Bergen from 1580 to 1748" at The Cultural History Collections are three large portraits of the town Bergen. All three pictures show the entirety of the town, they are all very detailed and unique to their specific epoch.
1740_ukjent.jpg
The Bojimans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam has a number of drawings made by the Dutch artist Willem van de Velde of Bergen in 1665. The main picture among van de Veldes sketches is a panorama of c. 3.4 x 0.45 metres which gives a total image of the town around the 1600s. This has never been shown before in Bergen. The oldest town portrait, which dates back to 1580, is the well-known engraving by Hieronymus Scholeus. The 1700s is represented by a prospectus of the city from 1740.
Pictures, sketches, maps, and film
The exhibition is built up around six main themes
* Willem van de Velde, the sole picture of Bergen in the 1600s
* Maps, sketches, and objects from Bergen in the 1600s
* 1580 Scholeus - Bergen between townsmen and Hanseats
* 1740 Prospectus - the large wooden city
* The BerGIS project, a historical, electronic map
* A film about the Battle of Vågen in Bergen and the work on the City’s Landscape.
The exhibition is a joint collaboration among the University of Bergen Library, Bergen Maritime Museum, the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion (AHKR), and Bergen Museum.
BerGIS: electronic map of Bergen in the 1600s
The background to the exhibition is the research project BerGIS. One of the aims of this project is to develop an electronic map of Bergen in the 1600s and to reconstruct the 17th century town landscape. The map portal is a geographic entry to real property registers, church registers, assessments of fire insurance and censuses. Through various sources we are able to follow properties over time and people who lived there. The project management is headed by Geir Atle Ersland and Arne Solli at the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, University of Bergen. See http://bergis.uib.no.