Who doesn’t love old maps? Maybe you don’t love them so much that you made your wedding invitations in the style of an old map (like my wife and I did). But maps pop up in plays all the time. Whether you need a large wall map for King Lear, or a small battlefield map for Arms and the Man, here are some sites that will help you find what you need.
David Rumsey Map Collection – Over 22,000 maps, focusing on 18th and 19th century North and South America, though other continents and time periods are available.
Perry-Casta̱eda Library Map Collection РLinks to hundreds of maps on other sites, as well as a small collection of its own historical maps.
Wikimedia Commons Old Maps – Dozens of maps categorized by location.
World Digital Library Maps – Over 300 high-quality scans of original historical maps (browse the rest of the site for lots of other historical artifacts).
Genmaps – Old maps of England, Wales and Scotland, navigable by county.
National Maritime Museum– Over 1700 historical sea charts and maps from the medieval period to the present.
Library of Congress – Some of their map collections are available online, though the navigation is horrendous.
National Library of Scotland – Over 20000 historical maps of Scotland available.
The 1895 U.S. Atlas – From Rand McNally.
Holy Land Maps – Maps of Judea, Palestine and Israel at the University of Florida.
Stuckenberg Map Collection – Gettysburg College’s online collection of mostly United States maps.
Antique Atlas – A site which sells old maps, currently offering images of over 900 of them.
Hargrett Library Collection -Over 1000 historical map images in another difficult to navigate format.
Historic Cities – Offers a number of old maps from a number of cities throughout the world (mostly Europe).
Reinhold Berg Antique Map Shop – Sells prints of the numerous historical maps on their site.
Old Map Gallery – Another site selling maps with many images.
If you still haven’t found enough map porn, you can peruse larger lists of sites at Odden’s Bookmarks. The site is a little out of date, so many of the sites are no longer available.
