Heraldry of the world

Welcome to the largest website on civic heraldry ! Heraldry of the World is a private website which is devoted mainly to civic heraldry, i.e. coats of arms of cities, states, municipalities, countries etc. It also includes an attempt to make a complete catalogue of heraldic (paper based) collector's items, again with the main focus on civic heraldry.

The site was created on January 2009 by amalgamation of my two sites; International Civic Arms (since 1996) and Heraldryshop.biz (since 2004). The site International Civic Arms was created in 1996 as Nederlandse Gemeentewapens (Dutch civic arms, hence the domain name www.ngw.nl) and went global in 1999. Ever since it has been the largest collection of civic coats of arms ever published. With the exception of a break during 2006-7, it has been growing steadily every month. See here for more history.

Although as much information on the arms as possible will be included, like pictures, meaning and history, often there is just a picture, not a description of the arms, nor a history. Any additional information thus is welcome ! All information is taken from public sources (books, internet) and the sources are always mentioned and credited. Most pictures are scans from books, with the exception of the Dutch civic arms, where all the pictures are made by myself.

Arms of countries, areas or provinces that do not exist anymore, are placed under the country in which the area is situated at this moment (except for the historical provincial arms in Austria-Hungary). For example, cities, which were granted arms during the Russian Empire, are now under the individual countries. Similarly, towns in the former German provinces of Prussia and Posen are placed under Poland, the South African Homelands are under South Africa and Dutch East Indies are under Indonesia.