The 1492 Aguiar map, the oldest dated Portuguese portolan chart in existence, dramatically demonstrates the world as Christopher Columbus and his crew would have seen i… See more

The Martellus world map, composed around 1490, is a stunning rare survival of the pre-exploration world. One of the largest maps in the collections, it is too large to be … See more

The Beccari portolan chart (1403) is far older than the Aguiar map but contains a crucial cartouche that describes how map makers such as Beccari composed these maps, parti… See more

The Abenzara map is unique for entirely different reasons. Judah Ben Zara (or Abenzara) was one of a handful of Jewish cartographers in Europe that we know of and his reli… See more