The extracts of the two maps shown here are from a number of maps recently catalogued and added to the collection which were published by Allied Forces to help with the invasion of France, and feature coastal towns on both the North East and South West coast. Both sheets are from earlier published sets by the cartographic wing of the […]
This nineteenth-century map of the area around Collo, on the coast of Algeria, shows a “Ville projetée,” a proposed town. With a regular grid of streets, including a church, a market and several unidentified buildings, it looks orderly and regular, fitting into the comparatively flat and empty plain between the hills and the sea. To […]
What we now call trench maps are an organized set of maps at a detailed scale which start on the coast either side of the French and Belgian border and go, numerically, in a north-west to south-east flow down through France and Belgium. Using pre-war French and Belgian maps as a reference these maps show […]
Cóvens & Mortier’s Atlas nouveau is a beautiful thing: a re-engraved copy of the work of the French cartographer Guillaume de l’Isle, it was published in Amsterdam from the 1730s onwards in several editions, expanding from a early version with around 50 maps to a much larger volume. This copy, dating from around 1745, contains […]
Many of the maps in our collections were made for, or about, travel. And even now in an age when we increasingly use satnavs or GPS to find our way, a map that you can hold in your hands has its own charm. A recent Bodleian book, Adventures in maps, uses some of these to tell […]
Hosting the Olympic Games is a huge task for even the largest and most seasoned of cities, requiring years of careful logistical planning. However, hosting the Games also presents a cartographic challenge, with transport alterations and dozens of temporary venues rendering ordinary city maps inadequate for visitors. Special maps are often commissioned by upcoming hosts, […]
This atlas seems to have had a hard life. The printed maps, dating from the early eighteenth century, are nicely engraved and hand coloured but most are stained and tatty and have been heavily folded to fit into the binding. On closer inspection it is not a published atlas as such, but a collection of […]
Few maps manage to combine cartography, history and sheer bonkersness with such good effect as Prussia pausing, or the accurate armistice demarcation line. In the map the neck and face of a lion are overprinted on a map of France like some animalistic Victorian ectoplasm to show the areas occupied by German forces at the end of […]
The Map Room was recently given what appeared to be two facsimiles of early printed maps of Paris from the sixteenth century. The smaller one bears a Latin title, “Lutetia vulgo Paris Anno 1575” – a fairly conventional way of giving both the Latin and vernacular versions of a place name in a map title. […]
In 1877 the political satirist Frederick Rose produced the ‘Serio-comic war map for the year 1877′. Rose used the map to compare Russia to an Octopus, the analogy being that Russian tentacles, grabbing hold or in some cases choking various countries, symbolized how Russia was attempting to gain influence over Europe. An earlier blog on cartoon […]