I went to Venice in 2017 with a list of "must-sees," one of which was the Fra Mauro original map. I had previously seen a replica, and it was breathtaking. (That thing is eight feet tall, or 2.4 meters, with gold lettering and all)<p>The map was housed in the Marciana Library in Venice. Unfortunately, nowhere on the internet did it mention that the map had been removed for restoration. This prevented me from seeing it in person, and perhaps I never will.<p>Naively, I thought that the library's website would inform visitors about such changes. However, the reality is that website updates often lag behind changes in exhibits. Lesson learned: I now call the places I want to visit to confirm their hours and current offerings.
Interestingly varying levels of accuracy as you look at the Levant. The mapmakers have a very good idea of what cities lie on the coast and in which order, but the actual shape of the coast is completely unknown to them and the relation of inland sites to the known coastal ones is... rough.<p>Interestingly: "Those who are expert, let them complete this Idumea and Palestina and Galilea with what I do not put - that is, the river Jordan, the Tiberian Sea, the Dead Sea and other places which it has not been possible to include"
It's weird that it mentions the Sea of Cádiz, but not Cádiz City. Instead: Vejer ("Beger") Tarifa ("Terifa") and Gibraltar ("Zibelter"). The cities far from the coast are randomly placed. Actually, Mediterranean Sea seems mostly accurate and anything else gets deformed, more so as distance increases. See Africa.
For an even earlier world map, the Beatus map from the 8th century is also remarkable: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatus_map" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatus_map</a><p>The layout is mostly geographic although bears traces of a conceptual map as well. (Note: north is to the left). It's part of the larger book the Commentary on the Apocalypse which contains a lot of gorgeous illustrations. The original is lost but exists in many hand copies, starting from the 9th century.<p>If you're ever in Northern Spain there's a museum in the town of Potes near the Santo Toribio de Liébana monastery where Beatus worked. <a href="https://centros.culturadecantabria.com/tower-of-infantado/" rel="nofollow">https://centros.culturadecantabria.com/tower-of-infantado/</a>
This was a really enjoyable couple of minutes. I was able to find some of the more ancient cities I've visited (Ceuta, for example), and see how they're represented.<p>Now that we've seen how quickly digitized information becomes un-usuable, it's interesting to reflect that the actual physical Mappa Mundi will far outlive (barring fires/disasters) any of it's digital reflections.
It's also interesting they didn't put themselves in the middle of the map, as was common at the time. It's also fascinating how slow the technical evolution was at the time. The author makes direct references to Ptolemy (works dating around 100 AD).
Having not seen the map before, and noting from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fra_Mauro_map" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fra_Mauro_map</a> it was apparently by a Venetian...<p>Is it known why the Italia peninsula and most of the surrounding area has been rubbed away over time while most of the rest of the map looks fairly untouched? (Bulgaria might have a slight issue, yet nothing like the entire country being smeared) Did not see anything mentioned in the Europe or summary portion of the above article.
In the baltic sea, the text translation reads "This sea is not navigated with map and compass but with a sounding-lead; and throughout here there are many inhabited islands"<p>I wonder what a sounding-lead might be?
One of the famous mappa mundi errors is actually California <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_California" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_California</a>
It's a shame that this kind of interesting and interactive learning experiences have been dispersed and relegated to obscure parts of the web, instead of being part of a central repository of knowledge.<p>In my teens I used to spend hours marvelling at similar visualizations that were part of Encarta. Most of them were technically crude compared to what we can do today, so I feel that we lost a crucial opportunity to spread knowledge.<p>While Wikipedia is great, it's mostly a static repository, and pales in comparison when it comes to engagement. I think there's still a chance for an organization to curate the content on Wikipedia, and make it interactive and engaging, since Wikimedia is clearly not interested.