Any historian or genealogist will agree that maps are an essential tool to making sense of research, creating mental images of places and times, and enriching historical context. I have relied heavily on maps to locate ancestors’ farms or addresses in Riga, to determine relationships between manors, to judge distance, to understand name changes over time, to locate cemeteries and other important sites, to confirm railway routes and many other things.
It can be frustrating to not know where or how to access maps of the areas and historical periods you are researching, so I thought I would put up a post collating the resources I have found especially helpful over the years.
Online Historical Map Collection – Vesture Dodies
This easy-to-use website is my ‘go to’ for historical maps. When you open the site, you will see a basic, modern map of Latvia with Riga at the centre. By scrolling up and down you can easily zoom in and out and you can drag the map around to get to other sections of the country. On the right you will see a long list of all the different overlay maps you can access. The list tells you the year/years the map was made and what kind of map it is. Not all of the maps cover the entire country so you will have to play around to see which maps are most useful for your area.
Let’s say I want to look at the Zalenieki region south of Jelgava, where the Rozentals family lived. One of the most useful maps for this area is the one at the top of the list: 1920-1940 Latvijas armijas. Click the box and the map will appear overlaid over the top of the default map. I can now see the names of all existing farms, manors, towns and churches at that time. It also show cemeteries, rivers, forest land and bodies of water. This is very helpful as many of these farms no longer exist today so can’t be found on modern maps. The language used in this map is Latvian.
Another option in this area is the 1917 Karte von Kurland map. This map also shows manors and farms but you can see the German names, which can be very useful when trying to match up the same name of a farm in different languages. The 1905 RKKA map has the same farms and manors in Russian.
You can also access maps here from more modern periods such as the 1960s or 1980s plus old satellite maps. In researching Riga, you also have access to older maps from the 19th century. Overall, this is a wonderful site to play around with that offers so many maps at your fingertips.
Baltic Maps
The Baltic Maps website is a modern map that focuses on the Baltic countries (you can zoom into other places in the world but the Baltics have the most detail). It is a great resource to cross-reference farms from the older maps and see if they still exist today and what their modern Latvian name is. You can also search by entering a word or part of a word into the search box and it will look for matches with existing farms, manors, cities, streets, villages, parishes, rivers, lakes, schools, historical places, utilities and services and more. You can zoom in to a very detailed level of individual buildings and tiny laneways.
This is also a very good way to match up roads, streets and towns with the same place on Google Maps so you can see if it is possible to Street View something. You can also use this map for travel. For example, if you zoom into downtown Riga, you can see dozens of icons indicating accommodation, restaurants, shops, attractions etc.
Ciltskoki’s Historical Maps of Riga
This site has ten historical maps of Riga that you can zoom into from 1884 to 1939. The 1926 and 1937 street maps of Riga on this site were invaluable when trying to figure out the original location of Andrejs Zekants’s pub. The street it was on, Nordeku iela, no longer exists, but because of these maps I have been able to pinpoint the exact location today.
The 1939 map includes the Roman numeral designations for the district sections of Riga. This comes in very handy when searching for certain records such as passport documents when you need to know which numbered district your ancestor’s address was located in.
Riga Historical Maps – Rīgas vēsturiskās kartes
This is a superb collection of beautifully imaged maps of Riga from different eras and the maps are zoomable. It is easy to go from map to map in different times and find out about changes from one map to the next including street name changes, eliminated streets, names of buildings and industry etc.
Ciltskoki’s Churches & Manors Map
This Google Map has been put together by volunteers and it is a wonderful resource for finding the nearest church to a village or manor. For example, many people know what farm their family lived on but do not know which church they may have belonged to. This map will show you all the possibilities in the area. Often families had events recorded at more than one church, or they might change churches over the years or they might have attended services in one church but had events recorded in another.
Churches listed here include Lutheran, Catholic, Orthodox and Baptist. When you click on the icon for a church there will be links on the left-hand side for websites and for their inclusion in Raduraksti if there is one (Raduraksti is the online database for scanned church records).
In addition to churches, you can also find old manor houses, known as ‘muižas’ in Latvian (mainly in the Kurzeme and Vidzeme regions), historic pubs (mainly in the Vidzeme region), historic Riga neighbourhood designations, and disputed border areas. When searching for a manor house you can click on an icon and find the Latvian and the German name for the manor (which is helpful when searching these places in the 19th century). This is also a work in progress so new information will be added periodically.
1935 Railway Map of Latvia
This map I found on an auction site (Vitber Art & Antiques) and even though the sale of this item ended back in 2023, it is still available online for viewing. It is a map of all the railway lines and stations as they were in 1935. There is a handy ‘magnifying glass’ you can sweep around to zoom in to the detail. I have found this quite helpful when figuring out how people might have gotten from place to place, which stations they would have used and how long it might have taken. Enjoy it while it lasts because the auction site could take it down at any time.
Book: 100 kartes pirms Latvijas valsts
This beautiful book was published in 2021 and I had to buy a copy (even though it is all in Latvian!). It is a celebration of Latvia through maps. It includes 100 maps dating between 1795 and 1917. The book includes a two-page spread for each map. The maps vary widely in their scope and focus, with many focusing on Riga, others showing the entire Baltic region, some showing various aspects of what we call today the country of Latvia and some showing other things like a regional town, transportation routes or statistics. There is even a 1902 map showing telephone lines across the country!
There are many historical photographs included as well as old postcard images. I wish I could read the text!! I need to scan the pages and translate them sometime. But even without knowing the text there is much to be learned and appreciated by looking at this wonderful collection.
Latvian National Library – Online Map Archive
This site is part of the Latvian National Library’s online databases. I have not explored their map section much but there are many to see. The ‘Map Viewer’ is very similar to the above-mentioned Baltic Maps site, but without some of the specific search functions.
There are over 200 maps to look at here from the 16th to the 20th centuries. I have circled in red the sections where you can search maps. When you chose one of the sections (Let’s look at Close roads, far roads), you will see a list of available maps across several pages. When you are looking at the site in English you will see a button that says ‘See in Detail’. When you click on that and scroll down you will see the available downloads. Once you download the map into your computer you can then zoom in to see more detail. There is a ‘View Map’ button but I can’t always get it to work. Downloading is a better way to get access to whichever map you want to look at.
You can use the search bar to find specific kinds of maps. For example, if I put in the Latvian word ‘dzelzceļu’, which means ‘train’ then I get 41 train maps from the late 19th century to today.
Have Fun Exploring!
I hope this overview of the maps and map sites that I have found helpful over the years also helps others to investigate their family history more easily and more accurately. Please contact me if you have other great map sites that you would like to share!
This is so helpful, thank you so very much. I will use it to explore much more about the farms and areas our families lived at. So enjoying your posts, and I’m so impressed with what you have achieved! Thank you for sharing.
Thanks so much Gaby!!