DURING a keep in Venice a number of years in the past, I frolicked within the Correr Museum, absorbing town’s historical past. Positioned in Saint Mark’s Sq., the museum shows imposing statues, work of sea battles and historic weapons. However as I handed by way of the final room of reveals, one other artefact hanging alone in an alcove caught my eye. It was a map of the world – a “mappa mundi” in Latin – however it was in contrast to any I had encountered earlier than.

Framed in gold and a couple of.4 metres in diameter, the world pictured right here was a mixture of rolling blue seas with cresting waves and off-white landmasses, all coated with handwritten notes. It was probably the most stunning, and fantastically complicated, issues that I had ever seen.

Created by a monk referred to as Fra Mauro 550 years in the past, the map had been largely ignored for hundreds of years, a lamentable state of affairs contemplating it shows a degree of accuracy absent in earlier maps. Flip it the wrong way up – Mauro positioned south on the prime – and it’s recognisable as a map of Africa and Eurasia.

Following my go to to Venice, I made a decision to search out out extra about this map, a mission that culminated in my e-book Here Begins the Dark Sea. I spent greater than a yr delving into the literature on world maps, poring over Fra Mauro’s creation and making an attempt to grasp what he meant it to say. It seems that it was a part of the inflection level from the Center Ages to the Renaissance as a result of it was the…