The full title of my book is: „Topographia Galliae, oder, Beschreibung und Contrafaitung der vornehmbsten und bekantisten Oerter in dem mächtigen und grossen Königreich Franckreich : beedes auss eygner Erfahrung und den besten und berühmbtesten Scribenten so in underschiedlichen Spraachen davon aussgangen seyn auch auss erlangten Bericht- und Relationen von etlichen Jahren hero zusammengetragen in richtige Ordnung gebracht und auff begehren zum Druck verfertiget / durch Martinum Zeillerum“ which transaltet means:
Topographia Galliae or Description of the finest and most well-known Places in the powerful and grand Kingdom of France, based on own experiences and Scriptures in different languages, relations and release dates, brought in the right order and made ready to print by Martin Zeiller.
From the title you learn that the book is about areas/ villages in France. An important point might also be that the author didn’t write all descriptions himself.
The book is sorted in chapters of the topography Galliae which each describe a bigger area of France. This book precisely contains part four to eight. My friends with an old book exercise concentrates on the fourth part of Burgundy.
At the start of each chapter, there is a couple of pages written on the page, followed by landscape drawings and sometimes floorplans of mentioned buildings. Then, the places and villages, sometimes only castles are listed in alphabetical order. Illustrations of areal projections and floorplans are added every couple of pages and take up a spread of pages each time. Sometimes there are two drawings, on on the bottom of the two pages and one at the top. After Each chapter, there’s a register of the places mentioned and the end.
I think the autor wanted to collect all text and make one large series of books containing the full information, bundled together. It is very elaborate, with more than fifty mentioned places in just one chapter/ area. I imagine that in the end, the result was almost a map with all places, but additionally written descriptions and images.
I believe that there are multiple books with the title “topographia gallilae”, each containing different areas in France, but during my research I also saw different “Topographias” from the same author, for example about Germany.