Maps do more than show us the way and identify major landmarks – rivers, towns, roads and hills. For centuries, they also offered a perspective on how societies viewed themselves in comparison to the rest of the world.
The Atlas Miller
April 7, 2015 By
This gem in the history of cartography is the outcome of the combined efforts of the workshops of the first two ‘schools’ of Portuguese cartography
Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps
February 24, 2015 By
Chet Van Duzer, author of the recent book Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps, will trace the history of sea monsters on European maps, beginning with the earliest mappaemundi on which they appear in the tenth century and continuing to the end of the sixteenth century.
The Universal Atlas of Fernão Vaz Dourado
February 9, 2015 By
Vaz Dourado authored at least four different nautical atlases, each of them including 20 maps, painted between 1568 and 1580, which is to say at the pinnacle of Portuguese cartography.
Medieval Maps of Britain
February 8, 2015 By
How did people depict England, Scotland and Wales in the Middle Ages? Here are 15 images of maps created between the 11th and 16th centuries, which shows how maps developed over history.
Recovering the lost details of a medieval map
November 10, 2014 By
Researchers at Yale University have started a project to recover details from a 15th-century world map which had been obscured after centuries of fading.
The Ebstorf Map: tradition and contents of a medieval picture of the world
October 25, 2014 By
The Ebstorf Map, the largest medieval map of the world whose original has been lost, is not only a geographical map.
Quiz: Medieval Maps
October 11, 2014 By
How good are your geography skills? Try to identify these 15 places based on how they are depicted in medieval maps
Real and imaginary journeys in the later Middle Ages
September 1, 2014 By
For a proper understanding of the actions of men in the past it is necessary to have some idea of how they conceived the world and their place in it, yet for the medieval period there is a serious inbalance in the sources.
A Peripheral Matter?: Oceans in the East in Late-Medieval Thought, Report and Cartography
August 24, 2014 By
It is something of a truism that the Ocean Sea {mare oceanum in medieval texts and cartography) marked out a real and conceptual periphery for medieval Western Europeans.
The Problem of Mayda, an Island Appearing on Medieval Maps
July 27, 2014 By
Of all the legendary islands and island names on the medieval maps, Mayda has been the most enduring.
Mapping the Medieval Countryside
June 18, 2014 By
My summary of a Institute of Historical Research session on the digitization of records in Late Medieval England.
The Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem
March 23, 2014 By
This documentary takes a look at the Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem – one of the largest and greatest atlases ever assembled.
The Crimea on the Map of South Sarmatia by Bernard Wapowski
March 4, 2014 By
The purpose of the present article is publication and analysis of the content of the map of the Crimea, practically unknown in Ukraine, which is a part of the map of the South Sarmatia of 1526 by ‘the father of the Polish Cartography’ Bernard Wapowski.
Vespucci’s Triangle and the Shape of the World
January 17, 2014 By
Interdisciplinary interactions between sixteenth-century travellers and cosmographers produced visual models that challenged normative modes of visual thinking, even as they tried to clarify ideas about the earth’s surface.
Medieval England map on Google Maps
December 11, 2013 By
Google and National Geographic are teaming up to share over 500 of the maps created by National Geographic Magazine.
Pelagios Project to give better understanding of ancient and medieval maps
September 23, 2013 By
A collaborative project is bringing together maps and geographical texts from Antiquity and the Middle Ages in a new online database that will allow researchers and the general public to explore online the changing historical significance of many of the world’s most famous cities, as well as smaller urban centres.
Ten Beautiful Medieval Maps
July 28, 2013 By
Our list of the best medieval maps – ten maps created between the sixth and sixteenth centuries, which offer unique views into how medieval people saw their world.
The so-called Genoese World Map of 1457: A Stepping Stone Towards Modern Cartography?
May 18, 2013 By
Around the time of Christopher Columbus’s birth, we find on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, especially in the north of Italy, a variety of people particularly interested in problems of geography and cartography.
‘Fromm thennes faste he gan avyse/This litel spot of erthe’: GIS and the General Prologue
May 2, 2013 By
This paper was given at the Canada Chaucer Seminar on April 27, 2013.
Queen of All Islands: The Imagined Cartography of Matthew Paris’s Britain
April 29, 2013 By
In the middle decade of the thirteenth century, the Benedictine monk and historian Matthew Paris drew four regional maps of Britain. The monk’s works stand as the earliest extant maps of the island and mark a distinct shift from the cartographic traditions of medieval Europe.
Maps Illustrating the Viking Invasions of England
April 28, 2013 By
The accompanying maps, which were prepared for lecture-purposes, may perhaps be useful to others who want to illustrate a popular account of the Viking invasions of this country
A Peripheral Matter? Oceans in the East in Late Medieval Thought, Report and Cartography
October 21, 2012 By
Focusing in particular on the southern and eastern parts of the Ocean Sea, this article traces the broad contours of a representational and conceptual shift brought about, I argue, by the interplay between geographical thought and social (navigational, mercantile) practice.
Reflection of European Sarmatia in Early Cartography
August 23, 2012 By
While looking for the origins of the state of Lithuania, it is the study of old maps that helps solve a number of riddles, so far weighing on the history of our nation. Historical data, traced in maps and their images, unrestricted by any political, religious or pseudo- scientific taboos, allow us to cast a broad view on the dim and distant past of our state.
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