# Gallery > Cartographers Choice >  The City of Castran by Zong

## ravells

*Map:


*

*Created in:* Photoshop and Inkscape

*Review*
City maps are two things: Time consuming to make and very difficult to get right. You can't hide behind colours and textures with a city map...if it's not convincing it will be apparent. This city map by Zong took several years to make. The care and attention to it shows. The spare colour choices make the map more of an accomplishment....this is a beauty with a superb eye for detail: touches like the houses on the main bridge (as was known with bridges of that size in medieval times), the field distribution and shapes, the building to street ratio, the general dispersion, shape variation, block distribution and relative building size all testify to the fact that this is a stunner in the thought that has gone into it. It is very, very hard to get all of these factors right in a city map and Zong has done it.

Congratulations Zong on your award.




> So this is a first for me, actually finishing a map. I've been working  on and off on this for several years now. Some of you might remember  seeing my wip thread for it, if you do you might notice that I have  flipped the map vertically. This is because I made some geographical  changes on my world map and moved some countries around. 
> 
> Here is some backstory for you:
> 
> _The city of Castran is the capital of the kingdom of Kardoma, It is  one of the larger cities in the northern parts of the region of Aergada.  The citys roots can be traced back less than a thousand years to the  time of the great empire. During this time the great bridge, which today  is the most famous landmark of the city, was constructed. It was built  as a network of roads to allow the imperial troops easy travel to  distant parts of the empire and to help in its conquests of new lands.
> A small village existed on the western side of the river Rimen, after  the bridge was finished new development quickly appeared on both sides  of the river. And it wasn't long before the city became an important  trading hub._
> 
> Map was made with photoshop and the shield was made with inkscape.


*Original threads*
original thread

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## jtougas

Stunning. It's everything a great city map should be.  :Smile:

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## baddog117

Gorgeous. Reminds me a lot of the Harn World maps, which are just as excellent.

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## mwsasser

One of my favorite city maps on this site.  I'm honestly feeling envious that you've completed something this nice.  I've had something similar to this in motion for years but can't seem to pull it off like your map.

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## Kraal55

Awesome city map my friend  :Smile:

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## mwsasser

Will you be expanding on your document on how to make a fantasy city?  The techniques you have are a great base but did you create buildings and then "stamp" them or did you use another technique?

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## Daunty

very nice indeedy!

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## Waylander39

Lovely map!

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## Dano13

One of the Things that I have enjoyed about Cartographers guild and the artists has been the Creative and beautiful styles of every map and the desire to show that creative aspects of themselves. You have presented an excellent example of Creative Style. (as well as a beautiful Map :Wink:  ).

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## Hyrrow

Awesome map!

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## lordbruthos

mapa muito bom

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## TheMarquisDeSpace

This is fantastic

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## hobbit604

did you use any reference for help or just from your own imagination?

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## taro222

Awesome map that is its very tough job to make the map of the city i really like and impressed with your work..Thanks for great sharing..

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