An urban map is a two-dimensional scale representation of a town, showing the road structure, important buildings, healthcare, transportation, tourist and general interest infrastructure. The scale "Scale (cartography)") can range between 1:500 for the smallest nuclei and 1:10,000 for the largest.[1]​[2]​

The urban plan that offers detailed information on the organization of streets with their names, numbering, transportation, main buildings and other useful information is called a street plan or guide plan.[1]​[2]​.

Ancient Near East

Already in the times of the Ancient Near East, clay tablets were made with graphic representations of cities to scale. Excavations in the Sumerian city of Nippur[3]​ brought to light a fragment of a city plan about 3,500 years old, which is sometimes considered the oldest known urban map.[4]​ The clay tablet depicts the temple of Enlil, a city park, the city wall with its gates, along with a canal and the Euphrates River. The individual objects on this map were already labeled, in Sumerian cuneiform.[5]​.

Early Middle Ages

In manuscripts and early printed books from the late Middle Ages, cities are often shown in profile, or seen from an elevated vantage point. Nautical charts of the time sometimes show partially stylized urban landscapes, drawn in the form of pictograms, as in the Liber insularum archipelagi (Book of the Islands) by Cristoforo Buondelmonti,[6]​ from the year 1422.

The Nuremberg Chronicle, which first appeared in 1493, is one of the most important collections of city views of the late Middle Ages, with more than 100 such illustrations. However, panoramas like this one, or that of Bernhard von Breydenbach's Travel Notebook, from 1483, had more narrative or representative functions.

In these works, local conditions and relevant features - such as ports, magnificent buildings, walls, etc. - are illustrated. - as a backdrop to highlight historical descriptions or economic benefits of the city. On the other hand, less emphasis was placed on accuracy: in the Nuremberg Chronicle, only a quarter of the views of the city represented the actual appearance of the subject city, and some individual images were even used simultaneously to represent several different cities.[7]​.