600 BC · Mesopotamia
Babylonian World Map
The Imago Mundi — earth as a disc ringed by the bitter river.
The collection
Catalogue of maps
15 historical maps across every essay. Filter by century, region, cartographer, or tag — or search by title.
220 BC · Alexandria
Eratosthenes' World
A measured earth: the first grid of parallels and meridians.
AD 150 · Alexandria
Ptolemy Geographia
Coordinates for 8,000 places — cartography as a table of numbers.
AD 400 · Roman Empire
Tabula Peutingeriana
The road as the unit of space — Dacia stretched along an itinerary.
AD 1154 · Sicily
Al-Idrisi's Tabula Rogeriana
Made at the Norman court of Palermo for Roger II.
AD 1290 · Mediterranean
Carta Pisana
The oldest surviving portolan — the sea as a web of bearings.
AD 1300 · England
Hereford Mappa Mundi
A theology of space with Jerusalem at the centre.
AD 1450 · Venice
Fra Mauro Map
Venice's encyclopaedic world, drawn south-up.
AD 1507 · Saint-Dié
Waldseemüller World Map
The map that first wrote "America".
AD 1532 · Transylvania
Honterus' Transylvania
A humanist maps his own Carpathian homeland.
AD 1569 · Duisburg
Mercator Projection
Rhumb lines made straight — navigation bought with area.
AD 1570 · Antwerp
Ortelius Theatrum
The first modern atlas — the world bound as a book.
AD 1744 · France
Carte de Cassini
Triangulation turns a kingdom into a survey.
AD 1791 · Romania
Specht Map of Dacia
Habsburg military survey turns territory into administered grid.
AD 1972 · Global
The Blue Marble
Earth seen whole, from outside — the photographic map.
No maps match those filters.