The exhibition is organized on the occasion of the 195th anniversary from the time of creation of the Bessarabian Topographic Commission headed by Colonel S.I. Kornilovich (1816) and covers the chronological period from the late 18^th century to the first half of the 19^th century.

  The main exhibits are maps of estates kept in the collection of the National Museum of Archaeology and History of Moldova. The content of the exhibition is divided into four sections:

• Forms of ownership: large and small land property;
• Land surveyors: land relations intermediaries;
• Land relations: agrarian reforms, sale, purchase, lease, and inheritance of land;
• The fate of old estates: collectivization and dispossession.

Stages of development of the forms of land property in the time under review are presented chronologically, highlighting the main stages, and thematically, in accordance with the sections listed above. In addition to the maps, there were used auxiliary exhibits meant to create a historical background of the exhibition. Among these objects there are documents (titles, the manifesto of church lands and the Emancipation Manifesto of February 19, 1861, deeds of sale, lease, and tax), postcards, models of estates, books and magazines of the time with information on land relations, photographs and personal belongings of land surveyors.


The exhibition is concluded by the section "The fate of old estates: collectivization and dispossession", which includes items that refer to sovietization of land relationship (photographs and documents).