Mappa Mundi

A film about the Mappa Mundi which includes close-up images and an explanation of some of its imagery by Sarah Arrowsmith, our Head of Schools and Family Learning, has recently been published on the History West Midlands website. You can view the film here.

The Mappa Mundi has its own interactive website, where it can be explored in detail here.

The Hereford Mappa Mundi is unique in Britain’s heritage; an outstanding treasure of the medieval world, it records how 13th-century scholars interpreted the world in spiritual as well as geographical terms.

The map bears the name of its author, ‘Richard of Haldingham or Lafford’ (Holdingham and Sleaford in Lincolnshire). Recent research suggests a date of about 1300 for the creation of the map.

Mappa Mundi is drawn on a single sheet of vellum (calf skin) measuring 64 × 52 inches (1.58 × 1.33 metres), tapering towards the top with a rounded apex. The geographical material of the map is contained within a circle 52 inches in diameter and reflects the thinking of the medieval Church with Jerusalem at the centre of the world.

Superimposed on to the continents are drawings of the history of humankind and the marvels of the natural world. These 500 or so drawings include of around 420 cities and towns, 15 Biblical events, 33 plants, animals, birds and strange creatures, 32 images of the peoples of the world and 8 pictures from classical mythology.

Christopher de Hamel, a leading authority on medieval manuscripts, has said of the Mappa Mundi, ‘… it is without parallel the most important and most celebrated medieval map in any form, the most remarkable illustrated English manuscript of any kind, and certainly the greatest extant thirteenth-century pictorial manuscript.’

An exclusive range of Mappa Mundi posters, postcards, publications and gifts can be purchased from the cathedral shop.

Digital images of the Mappa Mundi (the complete map or any part of it) are available from the cathedral shop for private study and research or for publication. The basic price for one image is £24 + VAT. Additional reproduction fees may apply in the case of images required for publication.