Skip to main content


Maps are fabulous for coming to grips with ancient places and for aiding the visualisation. Rome’s evolution from dwellings on hills to a monumental city that was the centre of Mediterranean politics is aptly conveyed through maps.

What maps of the ancient world do you love?

#AncientRome #History #Cartography

Unknown parent

The Partial Historians
@clear_dusk oooo they are a great visualisation - I enjoy them too ☺️
in reply to The Partial Historians

The map that, 10 years or so ago, brought me down a rabbit hole from which I have yet to emerge: Dublin, 1610, by John Speed.
in reply to The Partial Historians

There are soooo many stories about middle age Dublin in that one picture.

e.g. the consequence of the gunpowder explosion of 1597 is evident

in reply to The Partial Historians

If you look at all the streets on the map you'll see that they are all packed tightly with buildings (houses, mostly). Except for the just south of Wood Quay, shown in the zoomed-in portion here. It's believed that the gunpowder explosion of 1597 (13 years before the map was published, but about 7 years before the map it's based on was drawn) destroyed about 40 houses, and killed a little over 1% of the population of the city.

By the time the basis map was drawn, not all those houses were rebuilt or replaced, so there were gaps in the street-scape.

in reply to Éibhear 🔭

I gave a talk for my colleagues at work (in an IT company, so not actually relevant to work!) about the streets of Dublin and how they developed over the centuries. The slides are here, but they're not very informative without the accompanying verbal description. If does have come cool maps of Dublin, though.

gibiris.org/HistoricalDublin/H…

in reply to Éibhear 🔭

@eibhear thank you so much for sharing these details - that’s really very interesting ☺️