As already announced in the Sandomierz thread in the Finished Maps area, i'm drawing a map or, to be more accurate, a veduta of the town of Nowy Korczyn. And there will be a bit of history at the beginning.

The town was founded shortly after 1250, and was laid out on a more or less regular street pattern (it's kinda grid-like, but there are some town with a certainly more strict grid pattern in Poland). Nowy Korczyn was a place of some importance right from the start on, which led to the foundation of a dominican friary shortly after the town's establishment; the monastery church from the 13th century still exists and is an architecturally important building, since it's one of the very few 13th century monastery churches in Poland. With the reign of King Casimir III. (1333-1370) began the golden age of the town. Casimir built a large and represantative castle on the banks of the Nida river just on the opposite site of the town, and probably also a stone bridge connecting the town and the castle. In the 15th century the importance of Nowy Korczyn increased even more, and together with the nearby Wiślica it was the place where the general assembly of Lesser Poland was held (and not the probably otherwise more important Sandomierz).
Those good times came to an end in the 16th century. Much as Sandomierz and probably most of the towns in Lesser Poland, Nowy Korczyn was devastated by war, fires and epidemias a lot of times. Since it was not too well defended, the town had no chance to survive the big wars of the 17th and 18th century without harm. In fact, with the loss of the castle and therefore the political importance, Nowy Korczyn saw a sharp decline of politcal and ecomonical potency, which culminated in the loss of the town charter in 1869. Today, Nowy Korczyn is not much more than a bigger village, but the regular street pattern, the extraordinarily large market square and especially the two medieval churches remind visitors of the town's former importance.

Well, that was a lot of history...

Now for the map itself:

Since there not too much to see in this early stage of drawing, i've made a rough sketch of the town's layout:

IMG_3502.JPG

Explanation:

1 The town's parish church

2 The monastery

3 The castle


And now the drawing itself:

IMG_3501.JPG


More progress will follow soon...