This 1822 map of Orel 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), provincial and district borders, monasteries, factories, and inns. 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. Orel was probably founded by the 13th century, as a fortress for the Chernigov Principality of Kievan Rus. Located on the borderlands of the Russian Empire, in the medieval era the Orel region was at different times under the control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Golden Horde of the Mongols, before its full integration into Muscovy by the 16th century. In the 17th century, it was the scene of peasant rebellions. By the 18th century it had become an important center of grain production in the Russian Empire.