Lacroix Frederic: Guide du voyageur a Constantinople et dans ses environs… contenant tout ce qui peut etre untile au voyageur. Paris 1839. First edition, and the first appearance of a travel guide for Constantinople! Modern leather over boards. Half title and title frayed at edges. Complete: [18], 191 p., and the large scientific and detailed folded map of Constantinople, as called for. Text mostly clean, with some very light scattered spotting in some pages and a few with more intense browning, but overall very good. The introduction of steamers on Levantine routes in the early 1830s completely transformed travel to the Levant. From then on, travel became possible for a wider category of wealthy people, and not only for the privileged few. These travelers needed guidance in foreign lands, something previously handled by embassies, but no longer feasible. Constantinople was the leading city of the Levant and the first to receive a complete travel guide with this edition. The work provides a detailed description of Constantinople in the 1830s, with an immense quantity of practical information for daily use: from monuments to money exchange places, things to see, or goods to buy. This makes it a true first travel guide. As these books were meant strictly for practical use, they are today very rare. The huge map of Constantinople, showing all its neighborhoods, is the most accurate of its time and marks an important step in the city’s cartography. Very few copies still retain the map.Not in Atabey or Blackmer. Absent from almost all major collections.