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A Street Map of Early Modern Europe

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Viabundus is an online map of medieval Europe.

Viabundus is a freely accessible online street map of late medieval and early modern northern Europe (1350-1650). Originally conceived as the digitisation of Friedrich Bruns and Hugo Weczerka’s Hansische Handelsstraßen (1962) atlas of land roads in the Hanseatic area, the Viabundus map moves beyond that. It includes among others: a database with information about settlements, towns, tolls, staple markets and other information relevant for the pre-modern traveller; a route calculator; a calendar of fairs; and additional land routes as well as water ways.

Viabundus is a work in progress. Currently, it contains a rough digitisation of the land routes from Hansische Handelsstraßen, as well as a thoroughly researched road network for the current-day Netherlands, Denmark, the German states of Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Hesse and North Rhine-Westfalia, and parts of Poland (Pomerania, Royal Prussia, Greater Poland). The pre-modern road network of Denmark will be added soon; the inclusion of other regions is currently being planned.

What features would an online map service have, if online map services existed in early modern Europe? Something like this. I tried the route calculator: I found that it would take me approximately 20 days to get from Frankfurt to Antwerp on horseback in 1500. (It’s about four and a half hours by car today, per Google Maps.) People who write historical fiction set Europe in this time period ought to be all over this. [MetaFilter]

New British Library Exhibition: Secret Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Banner illustration from the British Library’s Secret Maps page.
British Library

A new exhibition opened at the British Library this weekend: Secret Maps.

Maps have always been more than just tools for navigation – in the hand of governments, groups and individuals, maps create and control knowledge. In Secret Maps, we trace the levels of power, coercion and secrecy that lie behind maps from the 14th century to the present day, and uncover the invisible forces that draw and distort the world around us.

Some of the maps on display reveal hidden landscapes, offering insight into places long forgotten or erased from official histories. Others are purposefully deceptive, designed to protect treasures, mask strategic locations, or reshape the way we see the world. This exhibition uncovers each of their individual secrets, revealing their hidden purposes and power.

The exhibition runs until 18 January 2016. Tickets cost £20. There are also a number of talks, tours, workshops and other events affiliated with the exhibition; they’re listed at the bottom of the exhibition’s web page.

Update: There’s also a book.

Update #2: Strike action by British Library workers may affect opening hours. See this page for information.

Ads Coming to Apple Maps: Report

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

An update on ads coming to Apple Maps. AppleInsider, citing a paywalled report from Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter: “[T]he decision has been taken to move ahead with the project. The claim is that starting as soon as 2026, Apple will allow businesses to pay to have their entries in some way displayed more visibly within Apple Maps.”

Previously: Apple Exploring Advertising in Maps.

More on the Exhibition of Le Guin’s Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Mike Duggan takes a look at the exhibition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s maps currently running at the Architectural Association Gallery in London, which displays the maps as cyanotypes on fabric.

Book cover: The Word for World

In the gallery space, Le Guin’s maps are looked at in isolation rather than relating directly to a text. They demand a different kind of attention, for there is a different form of visual connection between a viewer and a gallery object than between a reader and a book. So the maps are taken out of their original context and placed in another. But this isn’t to say this new context is any less significant. […]

There will forever be a tension between the map exhibition and the ways that maps are encountered in books. By definition they are being “exhibited” and put at the centre. And there’s no doubt Le Guin’s maps look impressive here, masterfully hung, printed on deep blue cotton, bathed in warm lighting.

Draped thoughtfully in rows throughout the space is perhaps a nod to being immersed in the cartographic imagination of Le Guin. They are certainly a spectacle that encourages a closer look. But is that enough?

The exhibition runs through 6 December. The accompanying book is out now from Spiral House (and in the U.S. in January): Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.

Previously: The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin.

Dein’s Transit Maps: London in the Style of Paris, and Vice Versa

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Abraham Dein makes transit maps in the style of other transit maps—notably, a London Tube map in the style of a Paris metro map, emphasizing express lines and anchored by orbital routes. But he’s also got other cities, like Barcelona, Glasgow and Paris, drawn in the London or Paris style, on his Instagram and TikTok pages, and for sale on his Etsy page. Via Mark Ovenden, who interviewed Dein on his CATCH-cast program.

Why FEMA Flood Maps Are Contentious

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Two recent articles on the contentiousness that breaks out at the local level when FEMA updates its flood maps. Jordan Wolman’s piece in the Commonwealth Beacon focuses on the disconnect between FEMA’s maps and actual flooding risk in Massachusetts (as has been noted before, FEMA flood maps are based on past flooding and can’t make projections based on expected climate change effects). Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal [Apple News+ alt link] looks at how properties in a Montana town that were removed from the flood zone in proposed FEMA maps were later inundated by floods (properties in flood zones require flood insurance, and face additional restrictions, so there are incentives to appeal that designation; on the other hand, if you win your appeal and your property floods anyway and you don’t have flood insurance, well).

14 Million Water Wells in the U.S., Mapped

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The National Ground Water Association has announced the launch of an interactive map showing the location of some 14 million water wells in the United States (yes, Alaska and Hawaii too). “Use this tool to estimate well depths for new installations, analyze water table trends in your area, identify neighboring wells before drilling, research historical well data, and make informed decisions about well placement and design.” [Tara Calishain]

A Short Course on Maps as Historical Sources

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Historic Maps: Interpreting Stories of Place is a three-day short course on using maps as historical sources is being offered by the Institute of Historical Research in London from January 28 to 30, 2026.

Although maps have long been a part of historical research, they are subjective and should always be analysed in the same way as any other primary source. This dynamic 3-day Historic Maps Discovery Training will include lectures, one-to-one consultations, library tours, visits to our special collections and opportunities to explore our digital resource Layers of London. Together, we will learn about the different types of historic map, from the evolution of cartography to the simple digital tools you can use for comparison and analysis in your own projects. 

It costs £240; no prior expertise or experience required. Via Katie Parker, who’s one of the instructors.

South Korea Deciding Whether to Grant Google and Apple Access to Domestic Map Data

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

TechCrunch: “South Korea is nearing a decision on whether to allow Google and Apple to export high-resolution geographic map data to servers outside the country. The detailed maps, which use a 1:5,000 scale, would show streets, buildings, and alleyways in far greater detail than currently available on these platforms. However, several regulatory and security hurdles remain unresolved.” South Korea, which is technically still at war with North Korea, restricts data from the National Geographic Information Institute from being used outside the country, and has denied previous requests from both Google and Apple; Google, which stores its map data outside South Korea, has hitherto had to make use of less-detailed, lower-resolution data.

Two Mapmakers Awarded MacArthur Fellowship

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Tonika Lewis Johnson, whose Folded Map Project explores decades of segregation in Chicago neighbourhoods, and Margaret Wickens Pearce, whom Map Room readers might remember for Coming Home to Indigenous Place Names in Canada, are among the 22 recipients of this year’s MacArthur Fellowships. News coverage: AP, NPR. [Alan McConchie]

Strava v. Garmin

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

CBC News reports on Strava’s lawsuit against Garmin, which alleges patent infringement and breach of contract. Strava claims that Garmin is violating Strava’s patents relating to heatmaps and segments, and also says Garmin’s new developer guidelines require the Garmin logo to be present in every single post and image: “We already provide attribution for every data partner, but Garmin wants to use Strava and every other partner as an advertising platform.” Athletes who rely on both Garmin and Strava are just a bit concerned. (It may be worth mentioning that Strava added restrictions on third-party apps to its own API last year: see DC Rainmaker and The Verge.) Garmin isn’t commenting (pending litigation, etc., etc.).

Ethics in Cartography

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Nat Case writes about the ethics of cartography in Psyche:

You might think there’s not a lot to get moralistic about in the world of mapping. You would be wrong. For decades now, various critiques have been raised about cartography, its history, its current practice, its complicity in the evils of the world, and cartographers’ degree of responsibility. On the one hand, cartographic history in the West is bound up with institutions that created maps to prosecute war, subjugate colonies, extract wealth from the earth regardless of who was already living there, and manage mass social engineering including a large-scale oppression. Maps can also be tools that create individual agency by giving any map-reader a manager’s view of the world. That part tends to be noncontroversial. It’s who we work for and with that causes some people to raise concerns.

[Alberto Cairo]

First Radar Images from NISAR

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Imagery of Maine’s Mount Desert Island captured by NISAR’s L-band radar on 21 Aug 2025. NASA/JPL-Caltech.
Imagery of Maine’s Mount Desert Island captured by NISAR’s L-band radar on 21 Aug 2025. NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Preliminary images are in from the newly launched NISAR Earth-observing radar satellite. A joint mission between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), NISAR will use L-band and S-band synthetic aperture radar to produce images of land cover, soil moisture, vegetation, sea and ice and so forth at resolutions of five to ten metres. (For comparison, SRTM’s resolution is one arcsecond—30 metres at the equator.)

Oculus Mundi

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Geographical has an article about Oculus Mundi, the online home of the Sunderland Collection, a private collection of 13th- to 19th-century maps amassed over the years by its eponymous founder, Neil Sunderland, that sat in storage before the decision to digitize it and make it more accessible. I’m glad the article is here to introduce us to the collection, because the Oculus Mundi site is a bit over-designed and can be a challenge to navigate, especially at first. But making private map collections digitally accessible is always a good and laudatory thing, and in this case there’s plenty of good stuff to browse: try starting with this link.

How Maps Lie

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Last week Andrew Middleton (he of The Map Center) gave a presentation at the Dickinson Memorial Library in Northfield, Massachusetts. Titled “How Maps Lie,” it’s the kind of introductory talk that can never be done too much: about what maps actually do, and the distance that can exist between the map and the territory. The video is an archived livestream; the talk itself stars about 15 minutes in.