The Great World Maps
The Waldseemüller Map
America's birth certificate.
- Map
- Universalis Cosmographia
- Mapmaker
- Martin Waldseemüller & Matthias Ringmann
- Date
- 1507
- Held by
- Library of Congress, Washington
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.
Size
$29.00
The story
In 1507, in a small print shop in the mountains of Lorraine, Martin Waldseemüller printed a word that had never existed: America. Across twelve woodblock sheets he laid out the whole newly-widening world and, honoring the navigator Amerigo Vespucci, lettered the southern continent with a name that would swallow two hemispheres. Called "America's birth certificate," the only surviving copy sold to the Library of Congress for ten million dollars. The moment the modern world first learned its own name.
About this reproduction
- A faithful reproduction of a public-domain map held by Library of Congress, Washington — 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.
