Unusual Old Maps & Historic Curiosities

Historic maps do not always fit neatly into geographical categories. Some were designed to explain winds, tides or the heavens; others preserved reports of sea monsters, speculative coastlines, imagined islands and places that had never been reliably surveyed.

This collection brings together maps, charts and diagrams in which observation sits beside inherited authority, folklore and artistic invention. Their unusual details show how cartographers and publishers organised uncertain knowledge—and how readers once pictured oceans, polar regions, distant lands and the wider cosmos.