Look at any map of Europe from the Middle Ages or the early modern era, before the Industrial Revolution, and you will be overwhelmed by its dizzying incoherence—all of those empires, kingdoms, ...

From a small island in the Venetian lagoon, a 15th-Century monk somehow designed an astonishingly accurate planisphere of the world. On the second floor of the Library of Saint Mark in Venice, a map ...

Installation view of Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages at The Met Cloisters showing a sculpture of Saint Sebastian (Northern Europe, late 15th century) (all photos Emma ...

Detail from a manuscript made for King Lebna Dengel, circa 1520, Tädbabä Maryam Monastery, Ethiopia. Photograph by Diana Spencer, courtesy of the DEEDS Project In early 2020, just as the scope and ...

Medieval Christians drawing boundaries around ancient Israelite tribes on Holy Land maps had no idea they were influencing how later mapmakers would depict political power. Those red ink lines, meant ...

Paolo Forlin works for the University of Durham. He has received funding from the European Research Council and the British Academy. Earthquakes were a cause of devastation in medieval Europe. The ...