The Great World Maps
Typus Orbis Terrarum
The world map from the first modern atlas.
- Map
- Theatrum Orbis Terrarum
- Mapmaker
- Abraham Ortelius
- Date
- 1570
- Held by
- Published Antwerp
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.
Size
$29.00
The story
When Abraham Ortelius bound fifty-three maps to a uniform size in 1570, he invented the atlas — the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first true modern one. Its world map, an elegant oval wreathed in cloud, became the single most recognizable image of the Earth for a generation, a huge imagined southern continent anchoring the bottom of the world. Beneath it runs a line of Cicero: seen from the heavens, how small are the affairs of men. Geography's founding masterpiece.
About this reproduction
- A faithful reproduction of a public-domain map held by Published Antwerp — the work is centuries out of copyright.
- Printed to order on archival cotton-rag or textured laid stock, pigment inks rated 100+ years.
- Color-managed to the source scan; we correct nothing and invent nothing.
- Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed and linen-backed pieces ship flat-packed).
- If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.
Why our maps cost more than a poster: we print from the highest-resolution scans in existence, at sizes where the engraving itself becomes visible — the sea monsters, the tiny place-names, the burin lines — on stock made to outlive its owner.
