Abstract
The authors present a comparative analysis of presentation of build-up areas with conventional symbols on 60 civil European topographic maps. The above-mentioned maps are in different scales, from 1:10,000 to 1:100,000, and have been published in nineteen European countries and the autonomous community of Catalonia. The analysis has proved that the scope of characteristics of build-up areas presented on the analysed maps was very diverse, from qualitative and quantitative point of view (e.g. there were between 2 and 25 different categories on 1:10,000 maps). The 1:10,000 and 1:50,000 maps generally contain more information on the characteristics of build-up areas than 1:25,000 maps. The characteristics themselves are also very diversified (e.g. only 6 of them appear on more than half of the analysed maps – most often churches).
Polish maps stand out due to the fact that they contain particularly rich and consistent representation of both physiognomic characteristics and general functional characteristics of buildings and build-up areas at all the analysed scales.