Titled simply Lot, A. Vuillemin’s 1869 departmental portrait is a consummate fusion of pedagogy and pageantry. The map’s vibrant palette crisply distinguishes administrative limits while an elaborate cartouche anchors the composition with classical flourish. Around the image, Vuillemin integrates concise textual capsules that enumerate population figures, economic indicators, and distances from Paris—an intelligent guide for the traveler and the student alike. Political boundaries are rendered with confident clarity, but cultural life is given equal weight: coats-of-arms, portraits of notable personages, and scenes of daily labor and festivity collectively narrate the region’s identity. Conceived at the close of the Second Empire, this sheet embodies a moment when geography was harnessed to civic instruction, presenting Lot as a living province, intelligible by its numbers yet irresistible in its character.

Vuillemin was among the 19th century’s most persuasive cartographic storytellers, and here his hand is unmistakable. Decorative borders teem with vignettes—pastoral herds, market bustle, and vineyard labors—that speak to Lot’s agricultural backbone. Heraldic devices of principal towns punctuate the margins, while portraits of learned figures and statesmen lend historical gravitas. The result is not mere ornament; imagery and information collaborate to quicken the reader’s sense of place. Color demarcations guide the eye across arrondissements and communes, but the imagination is carried by the scenes: river craft slipping past arched stone bridges, hillside terraces banded with vines, and rural lanes winding toward fortified hill towns. This stylistic synthesis is Vuillemin’s signature: empirical precision enveloped in theatrical elegance.

Geographically, the map composes a lyrical study of limestone plateaus and river-cut valleys. The Lot River, whose dramatic meanders famously embrace Cahors, is traced with expressive sinuosity, joined by tributaries such as the Célé that carve through the causses. Ridges, escarpments, and forested swathes are articulated with refined shading, suggesting both relief and route. The cartouche and accompanying text call out agricultural specialties, from robust wines to pastoral husbandry, reflecting soils and exposures as carefully as any agronomist’s report. Pilgrimage and piety are never far from view in this landscape: sites like Rocamadour and cliff-side sanctuaries find their place in the web of roads, market towns, and river crossings—a geography where devotion, trade, and nature share the same stage.

Urban life is distilled into three radiant nodes—Cahors, Figeac, and Gourdon—each anchoring an arrondissement and each emblematic of a different face of Lot. Cahors unfurls within the river’s loop, a medieval city of arches and towers whose renown in wine and commerce resonates across the sheet. Figeac emerges as a scholarly and mercantile hub, long tied to regional exchange and remembered for sons who unlocked the scripts of distant antiquity. Gourdon, poised on its commanding height, surveys the northern approaches. Vuillemin’s labels and boundary lines bind these centers to a network of parishes, roads, and neighboring departments, emphasizing how jurisdictional order and lived geography overlap. Statistical notes—distance measures, demographic summaries, and economic cues—give administrative abstractions palpable human texture.

Created when France’s departmental framework had matured into a language of governance and education, Vuillemin’s Lot captures a nation thinking in regions. It is part gazetteer, part stage-set: the ornate cartouche hints at allegories of agriculture and industry, while the peripheral texts translate scenery into knowledge. In these plates, Vuillemin advanced a distinctly French cartographic ideal—where aesthetics dignify data, and local pride is taught alongside coordinates. The map’s disciplined depiction of political boundaries, entwined with heraldry, portraits, and scenes of labor and leisure, preserves the 19th-century conviction that geography forms citizens. For the connoisseur, it offers not only a lucid plan of Lot, but an enduring meditation on how a landscape becomes a culture.

Cities and towns on this map

• Cahors (modern population: approx. 19,000)
• Figeac (modern population: approx. 5,800)
• Gourdon (modern population: approx. 4,400)

Notable Features & Landmarks

• Vibrant colors demarcating different regions and departments
• Detailed vignettes depicting local scenes
• Coats-of-arms of various regions
• Portraits of notable historical figures
• Decorative elements around the borders
• Labels indicating political boundaries and department names

Historical and design context

• A. Vuillemin, 1869 (19th-century French departmental mapping)
• Vibrant color palette with intricate vignettes and an ornate cartouche; scenes include coats-of-arms, notable personages, animals, and human activities reflecting cultural and agricultural life
• Descriptive texts accompany each department/colony, providing statistics, distances from Paris, and cultural context
• Emphasis on political boundaries, cultural heritage, and agricultural characteristics; conceived as an educational tool and historical-geographic portrait of the region
• Created when regional mapping served administrative and instructional needs, capturing the political and cultural landscape of 19th-century France

Please double check the images to make sure that a specific town or place is shown on this map. You can also get in touch and ask us to check the map for you.

This map looks great at every size, but I always recommend going for a larger size if you have space. That way you can easily make out all of the details.

This map looks amazing at sizes all the way up to 50in (125cm). If you are looking for a larger map, please get in touch.

The model in the listing images is holding the 16x20in (40x50cm) version of this map.

The fifth listing image shows an example of my map personalisation service.

If you’re looking for something slightly different, check out my collection of the best old maps to see if something else catches your eye.

Please contact me to check if a certain location, landmark or feature is shown on this map.

This would make a wonderful birthday, Christmas, Father's Day, work leaving, anniversary or housewarming gift for someone from the areas covered by this map.

This map is available as a giclée print on acid free archival matte paper, or you can buy it framed. The frame is a nice, simple black frame that suits most aesthetics. Please get in touch if you'd like a different frame colour or material. My frames are glazed with super-clear museum-grade acrylic (perspex/acrylite), which is significantly less reflective than glass, safer, and will always arrive in perfect condition.

This map is also available as a float framed canvas, sometimes known as a shadow gap framed canvas or canvas floater. The map is printed on artist's cotton canvas and then stretched over a handmade box frame. We then "float" the canvas inside a wooden frame, which is available in a range of colours (black, dark brown, oak, antique gold and white). This is a wonderful way to present a map without glazing in front. See some examples of float framed canvas maps and explore the differences between my different finishes.

For something truly unique, this map is also available in "Unique 3D", our trademarked process that dramatically transforms the map so that it has a wonderful sense of depth. We combine the original map with detailed topography and elevation data, so that mountains and the terrain really "pop". For more info and examples of 3D maps, check my Unique 3D page.