Fra Mauro's World Map is a zoomable, explorable online version of his 15th-century mappa mundi.
It comes complete with exhaustive resources, videos and texts about the historical context, too.
The orientation of the map by Fra Mauro (active ca. 1430-ca. 1459/1464), with the south at the top, may be its most immediately striking and intriguing characteristic to the modern observer, who may find the arrangement confusing. Because we are accustomed to reading maps with the north at the top, it can be difficult at first to make sense of the relations among the land masses. Map orientation is a convention that has undergone numerous changes over the centuries. Most world maps designed between 1150 and 1500, for example, are oriented with the east at the top, both because the sun—associated in Christian cosmology with Christ—rises in the east, and because it was believed that the Garden of Eden was located in that direction.
Previously: Waterworld world map.
