Record Atlas
6 eras · 1198–2026 · 2,926 places

Bohemia

Prague, Plzeň, České Budějovice, Litoměřice. Which empire held this ground in which years — and, the part that matters, which archive that means.

Where researchers lose records here

1526–1918 — THE GOOD NEWS, AND IT IS EXCEPTIONAL. The Czech regional archives have digitised nearly every surviving parish register and put them online free, without an account. Western Bohemia is at Porta fontium, the rest at the regional archives' own portals. This is the best-served ground in this entire map.

Whose archive this ground was

YearsWho held itWhose archive that means
1198–1526 Kingdom of Bohemia no registers survive

Before registers.
1526–1918 Austria — Kingdom of Bohemia Porta fontium · Acta Publica · FamilySearch · ANNO — Austrian Newspapers Online

THE GOOD NEWS, AND IT IS EXCEPTIONAL. The Czech regional archives have digitised nearly every surviving parish register and put them online free, without an account. Western Bohemia is at Porta fontium, the rest at the regional archives' own portals. This is the best-served ground in this entire map.
1918–1938 Czechoslovakia Porta fontium · Acta Publica
1938–1945 Sudetenland and the Reichsprotektorat Arolsen Archives · Bundesarchiv

The Sudeten borderlands are annexed in 1938 and the interior occupied in 1939; the German population is expelled in 1945. The registers largely stayed.
1945–1992 Czechoslovakia Acta Publica
1993–2026 Czechia Porta fontium · Acta Publica

The rings are approximate — deliberately. They exist to shade which filing system a place fell under, not to adjudicate a border. A place near a ring's edge should be checked against both neighbours.

See the whole span, 1198–2026, on the map →

The map takes a range, and a range that crosses one of the rows above is where records get lost: the family never moved, and the archive on the far side of the handover will tell you it holds nothing.

2,926 places on this ground

The 200 carrying the most collections are listed; 2,726 more stand on this ground. Every place has them all.

122 FamilySearch collections reach this ground

Ranked with the regional ones first — a collection for a province is usually a better lead than a national index, though the national index is often where a name is actually written down. A free account opens the images.

…and 62 more.

All record regions · The map