The author begins with presentation of a programme of creating the detailed cartographic picture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th century, proposed by Stanisław Smolka from the Jagiellonian University at the first congress of Polish historians in Cracow in 1880. This initiative was partially realised in the atlas of Ruthenian lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the turn of the 16th and 17th century created by Aleksander Jabłonowski and printed in 1904 in Vienna. When Poland regained its independence, it became possible to organize further works. As their results two maps were designed, prepared and issued in the interwar period: the general map of the sixteenth-century Grand Duchy of Lithuania created by Jan Jakubowski, published in 1927 and 1928, and the map of Cracow Voivodship of the Four-Year Sejm period (1788–1792) elaborated by Karol Buczek with cooperation of several other persons and published in 1930 in Cracow.
The main topic of this article is a series of maps with commentaries prepared collectively in the Institute of History of Polish Academy of Sciences, entitled
This most detailed geographical and historical analysis of a large part of old Poland depicts the area in the 16th century, but it can also facilitate the process of gaining deeper knowledge about the history of these lands in the earlier and later centuries.