Search Maps

  • Map
    Brazil.
    Brasil
    This early map of Brazil is by Jacopo Gastaldi (circa 1500-circa 1565), a Piedmontese cartographer who worked in Venice and rose to the position of cosmographer of the Venetian Republic. Gastaldi produced maps and illustrations for parts of Delle Navigationi et Viaggi (Travels and voyages), a compilation of travel writings by the Venetian diplomat and geographer Giovanni Battista Ramusio (1485-1557). Ramusio's work contained more...
    • Contributor: Ramusio, Giovanni Battista - Gastaldi, Giacomo
    • Date: 1565-01-01
    • Resource: - 1 page
  • Map
    Geographic Map of Brazil.
    Carta geografica del Bresil
    This map of Brazil was published by Giovanni Battista Albrizzi (1698-1777), a prominent Venetian publisher of books and maps. The notes on the map, in Italian, include various speculative remarks about the people and the geography of the interior of Brazil, then still largely unknown to Europeans. Albrizzi, who inherited his business from his father, was part of a family active in publishing and...
    • Contributor: Albrizzi, Giovanni Battista
    • Date: 1740-01-01
    • Resource: - 1 page
  • Map
    The First Map of the Strait of Magellan, 1520.
    Primer mapa del Estrecho de Magallanes, 1520
    The first circumnavigation of the globe was the voyage of 1519--22 by the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan (1480--1521), undertaken in the service of Spain. The only known first-hand account of the voyage is the journal by Venetian nobleman and scholar Antonio Pigafetta (circa 1480--1534). Four manuscript versions of Pigafetta's journal survive, three in French and one in Italian. Pigafetta also made 23 beautiful, hand-drawn...
    • Contributor: Amoretti, Carlo - Pigafetta, Antonio
    • Date: 1800-01-01
    • Resource: - 1 page
  • Map
    Mappamundi. Little is known about the 15th-century Venetian geographer and cosmographer Giovanni Leardo, beyond the fact that three of his world maps have survived from late-medieval times, signed by their creator. This is the oldest world map held in the library of the American Geographical Society, and it is considered the finest example of a medieval mappamundi in the Western hemisphere. Leardo's two other maps,...
    • Contributor: Leardo, Giovanni, Flourished 1440
    • Date: 1452-01-01
    • Resource: - 1 page
  • Map
    The Drawing of the Modern Geography of the Whole Africa.
    Il disegno della geografia moderna de tutta la parte dell'Africa
    This rare map from 1564 printed on eight copperplates is the finest and most important large-scale map of Africa produced in the 16th century. Earlier maps were mostly printed from woodcuts; copperplates allowed the engraver to reproduce much more detail and finesse. The map was made by the Italian cartographer, engineer, and astronomer Giacomo Gastaldi (circa 1500--66) and engraved by Fabricius Licinus (circa 1521--65)....
    • Contributor: Licinus, Fabricius - Gastaldi, Giacomo
    • Date: 1564-01-01
    • Resource: - 1 page
  • Map
    Mediterranean Sea Region 1569. This portolan chart by the prominent Italian cartographer and engraver Paolo Forlani is the first sea chart engraved and printed on copperplate. Forlani was born in Verona but flourished in Venice in 1560--74. Most of his maps appeared under the imprint of other publishers, including Giovanni Francesco Camocio, Ferrando Bertelli, and Bolognini Zaltieri in Venice and Claudio Duchetti in Rome-members of the Lafreri school...
    • Contributor: Forlani, Paolo
    • Date: 1569-01-01
    • Resource: - 1 page
  • Map
    The Kingdom of Serbia, Otherwise Called Rascia.
    Il Regno della Servia detta alterimenti Rascia
    The note in Italian in the cartouche in the lower left-hand corner of this map states that it was "described on the basis of the most exact maps and with the direction of the most recent news by Giacomo Cantelli da Vignola, subject and geographer of the Most Serene Master the Duke of Modena and published by Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi in his printing...
    • Contributor: Cantelli Da Vignola, Giacomo
    • Date: 1689-01-01
    • Resource: - 1 page
  • Map
    Their Sound Spreads in Every Land and Their Words Reach Every Border of the Earth.
    In omnem terram exivit sonvs eorum et in fines orbis terrae verba eorum
    This map, published in Rome in 1927, shows the locations of the Franciscan missions around the world in 1926. Each mission is marked on the map, and a numbered key is used to provide the name and area of geographic responsibility of the mission. Symbols indicate the type of mission and the rank of its leading prelate. The areas of historical mission activity are...
  • Map
    The Eastern Basin of the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf.
    Il Bacino orientale del mediterraneo il mar rosso ed il golfo persico
    This undated Italian map of the Middle East was published by the firm G.B. Paravia of Turin, Italy. It is a political map marking the boundaries of states and empires at the date of printing, probably at the very end of the 19th century. A clue to dating is the designation of Somalia Italiana (Italian Somalia). A series of Italian protectorates was established in...
    • Contributor: Salussolia - Paravia (Firm)
    • Date: 1890-01-01
    • Resource: - 1 page
  • Map
    Approximate Distribution of the Rites or Schools of Law and Religious Sects of Islam in Arabia.
    Arabia distribuzione approssimativa dei riti o scuole giuridiche e delle sette religiose Musulmane
    This map illustrates the varieties of religious affiliation in the Muslim populations of the Middle East. It shows the locations of adherents to the four schools of Sunni jurisprudence and the distribution of Shia populations. Where it is impossible to portray this diversity visually, the sheet provides a few paragraphs of further explanation, such as on the Senussi order in Medina, the Maliki school...
    • Contributor: Nollini, Carlo Alfonso - Dardano, A. (Achille)
    • Date: 1918-01-01
    • Resource: - 1 page
  • Map
    New Map of the Arabia Felix (South-Eastern Arabian Peninsula).
    Arabia Felice nvova tavola
    This map of Arabia Felix is a copper-plate engraving dating from 1561, after Giacomo Gastaldi's map of 1548. It shows the Arabian Peninsula, Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Strait of Hormuz, and part of the Indian Ocean. The Qatar Peninsula southeast of Baharam (present-day Bahrain) can be clearly distinguished. This edition is by Girolamo Ruscelli (died 1566), a Venetian cartographer, polymath, and humanist. One of...
    • Contributor: Gastaldi, Giacomo - Ruscelli, Girolamo, Died Approximately 1565
    • Date: 1561-01-01
    • Resource: - 2 pages

  • Map
    Sumatra. This fine woodcut map of Sumatra is the first separate map of an Indonesian island to be based on actual empirical data. It is based on Delle Navigationi et Viaggi (Navigations and travels) by Giovanni Battista Ramusio, which was published in three volumes in Venice in 1550-59. Ramusio was a Venetian diplomat, geographer, and historian. Delle Navigationi et Viaggi is a massive work that...
    • Contributor: Ramusio, Giovanni Battista - Parmentier, Jean - Gastaldi, Giacomo - Parmentier, Raoul, 1529
    • Date: 1556-01-01
    • Resource: - 1 page
  • Map
    View of Algiers, Seat of Power of the Saracens, in the Numidian Province of Africa and Situated on the Edge of the Balearic Current in the Mediterranean Sea, across from Spain, under ...
    Algerii Saracenorum vrbis fortissimæ, in Numidia Africæ Prouincia structæ, iuxta Balearicos fluctus Mæditerranei æquoris Hispaniam contra, Othomanorum Principum jmperio redactæ, imago
    Shown here is one of the earliest printed maps of the city of Algiers. The map was created in 1575 by Georg Braun (1540 or 1541-1622) and Franz Hogenberg (circa 1535-90) and appeared in their Civitates orbis terrarum (The cities of the world), which was published in Cologne, Germany in six volumes between 1572 and 1616. The Civitates was an extraordinary cartographic achievement that...
    • Contributor: Braun, Georg - Hogenberg, Franz
    • Date: 1575-01-01
    • Resource: - 1 page
  • Map
    Portolan Chart. The first maritime charts were produced at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries. Their main purpose was to represent with the greatest possible accuracy coastlines and ports, for which reason they were called portolanos. When seafarers ventured out into the open sea, they entered their new discoveries on the charts. A Portuguese law stipulated that every ship had to carry two serviceable...