This 1822 map of Nizhniy Novgorod Province is from a larger work, Geograficheskii atlas Rossiiskoi imperii, tsarstva Pol'skogo i velikogo kniazhestva Finliandskogo (Geographical atlas of the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Poland, and the Grand Duchy of Finland), containing 60 maps of the Russian Empire. Compiled and engraved by Colonel V.P. Piadyshev, it reflects the detailed mapping carried out by Russian military cartographers in the first quarter of the 19th century. The map shows population centers (six gradations by size), postal stations, roads (four types), state, provincial and district borders, factories, and monasteries. Distances are shown in versts, a Russian measure, now no longer used, equal to 1.07 kilometers. Legends and place-names are in Russian and French. Nizhniy Novgorod was founded in the 13th century at the confluence of the Volga and Oka Rivers, a strategic location for trade and defense. The city name translates as Lower Novgorod, to distinguish it from the original Novgorod. The region was spared the devastating raids of the Mongols in this early era, mostly on account of its small size and relative unimportance. Muscovy absorbed Nizhny Novgorod in the late 14th century, and one of the city’s noteworthy families briefly attained the Russian throne when Tsar Vasily IV replaced Boris Godunov in the early 17th century. In 1613, a merchant from Nizhniy Novgorod, Kuzma Minin, joined with Prince Dmitrii Pozharskii to raise a Russian force to expel Catholic Jesuits and Polish troops from the Moscow Kremlin and end the “Time of Troubles.” In later centuries, the wealthy Stroganov family based their chief business operations in Nizhniy Novgorod, where the main industries were rope manufacture, shipbuilding, and metallurgy. The main national trade event, the Great Russian Fair, was also held in the city beginning in 1817.