Mappa Mundi: The greatest map of the medieval world | BBC Global

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Mappa Mundi: The greatest map of the medieval world | BBC Global


On the second floor of the Library of Saint Marks in Venice, Italy, a map of the world occupies an entire room.

The Mappa Mundi, completed by Italian monk and cartographer Fra Mauro in 1459 AD, is the compendium of all the geographical knowledge of the time and is arguably the greatest medieval map of the world.

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40 Comments

  1. 1459 is not that far in the history. Other civilizations had better knowledge of world geography. Vasco de Gama was guided to India from the Cape of Good Hope by an Indian merchant-navigator. Columbus landed in America and called it India and the people, Indian; a mistake even celebrated today!

  2. The biggest Mappa Mundi is in Hereford Cathedral. It hung on a wall there unprotected and unstudied for centuries before anybody thought it'd be pretty neat to actually preserve the thing. It has these fantastic depictions of the various mythical beasts thought to reside pretty much "anywhere that is not here".

  3. The cartographer apparently knew about Japan, and yet he also apparently thought Japan had a medieval fortified city. It’s interesting how cultural assumptions remain even among scientists.