Maps and cartography

Maps have been one of the most important human inventions for millennia, allowing humans to explain and navigate their way through the world.

Homer is considered by many scholars to be the founder of the early Greek conception of Earth, and therefore of geography. Ancient Greeks believed that they occupied the central region of Earth and its edges were inhabited by savage, monstrous barbarians and strange animals and monsters: Homer's Odyssey mentions a great many of these.

The earliest ancient Greek who is said to have constructed a map of the world is Anaximander of Miletus (c. 611–546 BC), pupil of Thales, whereas Aristotle (384–322 BC) is credited with proving the Earth's sphericity.

However, it was Eratosthenes (275–195 BC), a Greek scholar who lived in Hellenistic North Africa who made the first scientific attempt to give geographical studies a mathematical basis, a work continued by Ptolemy, a Hellenized Egyptian. Ptolemy revolutionized the depiction of the spherical earth on a map by using perspective projection and suggested precise methods for fixing the position of geographic features on its surface using a coordinate system with parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude.Ptolemy's eight-volume atlas Geographia is a prototype of modern mapping and GIS.

In medievel times, maps were mainly symbolic in form, and it was only after Renaissance, with the renewed interest in classical works, that maps became more like scientific. The era of exploration brought a development of cartography in the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe, with France emerging as the cartography center of Europe.

It was a French officer, geographer, engineer and cartographer, Pierre Peytier (1793 – 1864), sometimes named Eugène Peytier - who produced the first map of the Greek state (Carte de la Morée) in 1832. Captain Pierre Peytier, from the surveying service of the French army, had been invited to Greece by the Governor Ioannis Kapodistrias as a member of the Scientific Mission of Morea. Together with other three other officers they trained young Greek engineers who would undertake topographical projects, while Pettier himself was to draw up the plans for the city of Corinth and a map of the Peloponnese. This "Map of 1832", very accurate, on a scale of 1:200,000, on 6 sheets (plus two sheets representing some islands of the Cyclades), was the first map of the Greek Territory ever scientifically and geodically drawn.

In this exhibition you will find rich cartographic material, nautical atlases and illustrations of travelers from the 16th to the 20th century, depictions of ports and cities, Ottoman maps, species distribution maps from the Hellenic Center for Biotopes - Wetlands, as well as archaeological mapping and WWI plans of operations of the Army Geographical Service.