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universal nautical chart, which contained all the remarks and discoveries made by discoverers on their travels; the initiative, however, had already been applied by the Portuguese monarchy to likewise record their discoveries. This system was later reinforced by the House of Austria when it systematically banned the publication of maps or views that could harm the strategic interests of its possessions. This publication includes a set of plans that were labelled as secret documents, comprising an Atlas that the Marquis of Heliche commissioned from an Italian painter in the early 1650s. Entitled “Plans of different towns in Spain, Italy, Flanders and the Indies”, it was bound in 1655 and includes 133 images of plans, views and descriptions of sieges and battles on land and at sea in the Empire of Philip IV. The complete work was recently published under the auspices of the Regional Government of Extremadura, which presented the first historic edition of this previously unpublished item to the Prince and Princess of Asturias on occasion of their marriage in the spring of 2004. This publication includes nearly fifty of these images referring to the Iberian peninsula, directly related to sites of great geo-strategic value for the Spanish monarchy (46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92). The drawings were sketched by Leonardo de Ferrari, a painter from Bologna and not a cartographer or military engineer, as would have been usual for a project of this kind. The Marquis of Heliche supplied the originals that were used as a basis for these drawings: plans, maps and views of different origins, authors, sizes and scales that the painter adapted to provide the material with the homogeneous appearance with which it was finally bound. Some of the original plans used by the painter as models also travelled to