In the history of cartography, few names are as influential, or as visually recognizable, as John Speed. Best known for his richly detailed county maps…
Few English cities possess a cartographic history as rich and visually compelling as York. Encircled by medieval walls, shaped by Roman foundations, Viking streets, Georgian…
The Aral Sea: From Fourth-Largest Inland Sea to the World’s Newest Desert, A Cartographic History of Human-Driven Collapse and Medieval Precedent The Aral Sea has…
Why Scotland Was Tilted East: A Cartographic Mystery That Took Centuries to Fix If you’ve ever browsed old maps of Europe, you have noticed something…
For nearly two hundred years, European maps depicted a massive body of water in the interior of Florida. It dominated the American Southeast. It was…
The De Virga World Map (circa 1411–1415) is one of the most intriguing artifacts in early European cartography. It is also under-appreciated in its historical…
Stieler’s Hand-Atlas: how a German folio reshaped cartographic taste, 1816–1945 Adolf Stieler’s Hand-Atlas, formally Hand-Atlas über alle Theile der Erde und über das Weltgebäude. Is…
North is at the Top When most people look at a modern map, they instinctively expect one thing: north at the top. This convention of…
Few images in early modern cartography hold as much significance as the 1524 map of Tenochtitlan. It is charged with historical, cultural, and epistemological importance.…
A Window to the World: Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia In the annals of cartographic history, few works stand as monumental and influential as Sebastian Münster‘s “Cosmographia.”…