The Map House

The Map House www.themaphouse.com
The world's largest and oldest antiquarian map shop selling antique maps, globe

The World's oldest antiquarian map seller with over 10,000 beautiful, interesting and entertaining maps from the 15th to the 20th centuries. We offer the world’s largest selection of maps priced from below £100 to over £1,000,000. In addition, we have a decorative collection of antique prints ranging from architecture to zebras.

17/04/2026

USAF Lunar Reference Mosaic Map 🔎🌕

This photo-mosaic map of the moon compiled in 1962 was published by the United States Air Force Aeronautical Chart and Informational Service. This is the 2nd edition of this reduced-size Lunar Earthside Mosaic (LEM-1) published in 1966.

At the very beginnings of the Space Race, the US Air Force and NASA realized that to plan a successful route to the moon, they required a highly detailed map. The U.S. Air Force Aeronautical Chart and Information Center (ACIC) and the U.S. Army began to compile photographs and telescopic data of the moon from observatories such as Lick, McDonald, Mt. Wilson (U. S.) and Pic du Midi (France), as well as employing talented professional terrestrial cartographers, selenographers and editors such as British astronomer Ewen A. Whitaker (1922-2016) and Dutch astronomer and scientist Dr. Gerard P. Kuiper (1905-1973).

It was an ambitious project that resulted in 281 of the best lunar photographs and over 1,200 telescope observations being collected and carefully stitched together to create a magnificent wall map of the Moon almost 5ft wide and 4ft tall. This is one of the smallest of the reduced-size editions of that original Lunar Earthside Mosaic and is, surprisingly, hard to find on the market!

Transcend into outer space and explore the celestial maps at The Map House, or online at themaphouse.com

27/03/2026

Does this look infected? 🦟☠️

This bold and rather gruesome pictorial map shows the prevalence of the world's major tropical diseases, including malaria, cholera, and leprosy.

It was originally published in Magazine and created by artist Boris Artzybasheff (1899-1965), a renowned Russian American author and illustrator who painted over 200 Time Magazine covers between 1942 and 1966.

Zoom in to all of the gory details at themaphouse.com

21/03/2026

Speed's Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy 👑🗺️ This highly decorative 17th century map shows Great Britain during the Anglo-Saxon period.

It was created by John Speed, the foremost English mapmaker of the period. It was originally published within his seminal county atlas of Britain and Ireland, “The Theatre of Great Britaine and Ireland” (1611-12).

The margins feature illustrations with the seven Saxon kings of the Heptarchy on the left; and vignettes of pivotal events from Britain's conversion to Christianity - as told in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle - on the right.

Speed's work “Theatre” was the first complete county atlas of England and one of the only English atlases of the 17th century to rival the splendour of the Dutch atlases of the period. Speed's atlas was such a success that his maps continued to be printed for over 150 years by successive publishers, despite being terribly dated.

Their beauty was, and continues to be, their greatest attraction, though the contemporary 17th century descriptions (in English) on the back of each of the maps are also extremely charming to the modern collector.

Explore more fascinating historical maps at themaphouse.com

08/03/2026

This extraordinary map is a Jain textile painting known as a pata, shows the Lokapurusha, or "Cosmic Man".

The figure embodies the conception of the universe, both physical and spiritual, mapped upon an anthropomorphic form. The figure is filled with deities, heavenly beings, sacred diagrams, and cosmological realms.

The Jain Universe was divided into three worlds: the Upper World (ūrdhvaloka), the Middle World (madhya-loka), and the Lower World (adho-loka).

Here, the Upper World, represented here by the head and the borders of the map, consists of the heavens and is inhabited by deities. These deities are depicted on the map alongside recognisable icons or symbols, such as peacocks, elephants, and lotus flowers.

At the centre of the map is the Middle World, the only realm where humans were able to live. This is depicted by the the traditional circular map of the Aḍhāī-dvīpa, or the 'World of Humans'. This is the most important realm in Jain cosmology as only by living well as a human could a soul advance towards liberation.

The Lower World, represented by the column of central images of humans being tortured, is formed of a pyramid of seven levels of hell, each one more painful than the last.

Find out more about this beautiful map at themaphouse.com

24/02/2026

This map of the North Polar Regions by the great Flemish cartographer Gerard Mercator has some rather curious geography ⛰️🧲

It is largely based on the account of the ‘Inventio fortunatae’, a dubious 14th century travelogue of a journey to the Arctic. According to legend, the North Pole was surrounded by four islands separated by four great rivers. These rivers flowed from a great Arctic whirlpool within which sat an enormous mountain of iron, the Rupes Nigra. This mountain of iron was thought to be the reason that compasses pointed north.

Mercator, a far more rigorous scholar than many of his contemporaries, applied new ‘discoveries’ to his maps whenever he could. This includes the findings of the English voyages of discovery in search of the fabled Northwest and Northeast Passages.

Miniature inset maps of the Shetland Isles, the Faroe Isles, and the infamous phantom island of Frisland appear in three corners of the map while the fourth corner is occupied by a title cartouche.

Find out more and zoom into all of the brilliant details on themaphouse.com

Mortier’s glorious map of Africa, from his landmark atlas “Neptune Francois” (1700) 🌍The "Neptune Francois" was first is...
29/01/2026

Mortier’s glorious map of Africa, from his landmark atlas “Neptune Francois” (1700) 🌍

The "Neptune Francois" was first issued simultaneously in 1693 in Paris and Amsterdam by Hubert Jaillot and Pierre Mortier, respectively. The project was highly successful and Mortier developed the Atlas by adding two more sections or volumes to it. The first, Vol II was also issued in 1693 and consisted of a set of charts provided by the noted Dutch artist Romeyn de Hooghe. De Hooghe was primarily an artist and his charts bear a distinctive pictorial aspect. Volume III added in 1700, entitled "Suite de Neptune" concentrated on charts outside of French territory, including maps of the New World, the West Indies, South East Asia and the Indian Ocean among others.

The "Suite de Neptune" was the most elaborate and expensive atlas of sea charts published to date. It featured maps from all over the world and included a series of maps covering Africa and the African coast which were sourced from manuscripts provided by the French diplomat N.P. Ablancourt who gained access to these archives. Many of the coastal details were added to this earlier map of Africa, accounting for the mixture of French and Portuguese names. The fanciful interior detail, including the two mythical interior lakes thought to be the sources of the great African rivers, was speculation based on existing maps of the continent.

Hydrographically, the map extends past the Arabian Peninsula as far east as the Indian sub-continent and as far west as Brazil, showing the full extent of European activities in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. A final geographical peculiarity is the exclusion of the southern coast of Anatolia in the Mediterranean, cutting off the northern edge of the map detail at Alexandretta on the Levant.

Mortier's edition was a prestige work. Scholars have found that his book was the most expensive sea atlas produced in Amsterdam up to that time. On the rare occasions that an example of one of the maps in full original colour can be obtained, it is easily perceived why this work is cited as one of the finest and most spectacular atlases ever produced.

Visit themaphouse.com to find out more 🗺️🔍

Blaeu’s County Maps 🗺️🔍Can you find your town or city? These magnificent English county maps are by eminent cartographer...
24/01/2026

Blaeu’s County Maps 🗺️🔍

Can you find your town or city? These magnificent English county maps are by eminent cartographers Willem & Jan Blaeu.

Here, you can see Oxfordshire, Hampshire, Cornwall, and Yorkshire... but we have county maps from all over the UK and Ireland by a number of different cartographers, dating from the 16th to the 20th centuries! Explore the collection in our Knightsbridge gallery, and online at themaphouse.com.

Gallery opening hours: Monday to Friday 10:30am - 6pm and Saturdays 10:30am - 5pm.

***

For much of the 17th Century the firm of Blaeu were the dominant mapmakers at a time when Dutch cartography was universally acknowledged to lead the world.
Established in 1596 by Willem Janszoon (1571-1638), who had studied as a young man under the great Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), it originally produced globes and scientific instruments. However, the firm soon expanded into map-making and publishing, and eventually became one of the most important and prolific map producers in Amsterdam.

Find out more about the publishing house of Blaeu on our website and view their maps in our inventory.

A bird's-eye view of Hangzhou 杭州市 based on the 13th century account of Venetian explorer and merchant Marco Polo. This i...
17/01/2026

A bird's-eye view of Hangzhou 杭州市 based on the 13th century account of Venetian explorer and merchant Marco Polo. This is the first European map of the Chinese city. Hangzhou, or 'Quinzay' as it would have been known in the west. It was produced by Matthäus Merian in 1640.

One of China's oldest and greatest metropolises, Hangzhou is here situated within an enormous lake and was blessed with canals, monumental architecture, and - according to Marco Polo - over 12,000 bridges!. Unsurprisingly, Merian's version of Hangzhou looks more like Rome or Constantinople than any Chinese city of the time, but it nonetheless celebrates one of the earliest recorded European encounters with China.

Born in Switzerland in 1593, Merian (1593-1650) studied engraving in Zurich and then travelled throughout France before moving to Frankfurt. There he gained a position in the successful publishing house of Johann Theodor de Bry, the leading German engraver of his time, eventually marrying his daughter, Maria Magdalena de Bry. Merian’s fine maps and views are coveted for their historic depictions and handsome aesthetics.

See more original historic city maps from all over the world in the gallery or online at themaphouse.com

The Arctic Cold ❄️🏔️ Five maps in one, this work from 1870 shows the temperature at different times of year in the Arcti...
10/01/2026

The Arctic Cold ❄️🏔️

Five maps in one, this work from 1870 shows the temperature at different times of year in the Arctic, centring on a freezing January with lows of -32°C / -26 F 🥶

Here, at The Map House we have a fascinating collection of antique observations and reports on the climate and environmental science. This map derives from the Geographische Mitteilungen, the oldest German-language geographical journal. The Journal was established and first issued in 1855 and continued to publish until 2004! The magazine was conceived and edited by August Heinrich Petermann and published by Justus Perthes in Gotha, Germany.

In comparison to its contemporaries, such as The Geographical Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, the Mitteilungen had a far greater interest in the physical and natural sciences and in topics such as ethnography, leading to the inclusion of many fascinating, but sometimes obscure, maps on the most recent theories related to climatology, meteorology, botany, and zoology.

Explore our early scientific and thematic maps for yourself online at themaphouse.com or pop in to browse in the warmth of our gallery 🗺️

Rivers of the World 🌊 This clever mid-19th century infographic map shows the relative lengths of the major rivers of the...
02/01/2026

Rivers of the World 🌊 This clever mid-19th century infographic map shows the relative lengths of the major rivers of the world, as they were known to the Victorians.

A numbered index below the map identifies each river and their known lengths. At the time of publishing, the Amazon is listed as the world's longest river as the source of the Nile had yet to be discovered! Two further radial are show top left and right of the map providing data on even more waterways from around the world!

This map, dated 1844, is by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, the S.D.U.K. The outfit was founded in 1826, largely at the instigation of Lord Brougham. The main goal of the institution was “imparting useful information to all classes of the community, particularly to [sic] those who are unable to avail themselves of experienced teachers or map prefer learning by themselves”.

It hoped to achieve the goal of education by acting as the intermediary between authors and publishers in a series of ambitious publications ranging from geography to astronomy and from agriculture to engineering. The Society fixed the style, the selling price, the frequency of publication, and the payments to authors. The publisher then made arrangements with the printer and organized the distribution and sale.

Maps were one of the Society’s most successful productions and were sold serially, two maps at a time. When the Society wrapped up in 1848, a catalogue of two hundred and nine different maps had been published, some with elaborate decorative vignettes, illustrations of landmarks, beautiful bird’s eye views and - like this work - innovative educational infographics.

If you are looking for more geographical data visualisation, look no further! Visit themaphouse.com or see the maps in our gallery in Knightsbridge, London.

Address

54 Beauchamp Place
London
SW31NY

Opening Hours

Monday 10:30am - 5:30pm
Tuesday 10:30am - 6pm
Wednesday 10:30am - 5:30pm
Thursday 10:30am - 6pm
Friday 10:30am - 6pm
Saturday 10:30am - 5pm

Telephone

(00 44) (0)207 589 4325

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Map House posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Featured

Share

Category