The aim of this article is to examine the use of suitable archive sources for the study of the economic space of cities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The research is based on the integration and critical analysis of cartographic, descriptive and quantitative sources of an administrative and fiscal nature, developed by using Geographic Information Systems.
The advantage of adopting this approach includes, in addition to the study of spatial relationships amongst economic activities and the urban space, the possibility of investigating discrepancies between the sources, thus facilitating their interpretation.