Explore the medieval world in this 14th-Century map

Explore a map of Medieval Europe, which was a patchwork of hundreds of competing states.

Maps of murder across medieval England

These interactive maps show the sites of murders across York, Oxford, and London during the 14th Century. Explore the data by clicking site pins or experimenting with map filters, including crime scene type and murder weapon. Each pin includes a blurb on what researchers concluded about the attack, such as how a fight between the London fishmonger and skinner guilds during August 1340 ultimately left one man dead.

Visualizing Byzantium in the year 1200

This is a computer reconstruction of the Byzantine capital at its apogee, just before the Fourth Crusade. Alongside detailed renderings of the Hippodrome and Hagia Sophia, it includes dozens of the imperial city’s less famous monuments, many of which can still be found in modern Istanbul. The reconstruction is a work in progress, and the Byzantium 1200 X account routinely posts updates.

The history of the world map

What did people used to think the world looked like? From the beginning of human history to right before the age of exploration, learn how the world maps were created.

Experience 14 billion years of important moments in world history with this scrollable interactive timeline.

Visualize ancient Rome in 3D with this aerial view

Researchers have compiled meticulous representations of ancient Rome in this video game-like depiction of the Eternal City from the air. For eight minutes, viewers can take in what Rome looked like two millennia ago, from the terracotta-topped homes to the Forum and Colosseum.

View depictions of world maps throughout history

The first map to use latitude and longitude positions was created by Ptolemy in 150 CE, over 700 years after the oldest known world map, the Imago Mundi, was made with a Babylonian clay tablet. The Spanish crown created a secret master map from hundreds of sailors’ reports.

Create digital maps of Earth with custom sketches and labels

In this interactive, users can apply layers to various base maps to display natural and human features, including geological activity, biomes, ocean currents, population densities, and light pollution. Custom legends, markers, and drawings can be used to highlight prominent features.

A map of the Byzantine Empire

This map, hosted on the World History Encyclopedia, shows the Byzantine Empire in four eras. The area shaded dark purple is the original Eastern Roman Empire. The light purple areas represent the conquests of Justinian. The dark purple line surrounds the middle Byzantine Empire. The hatched area, finally, indicates the small “Latin Empire” established after the Fourth Crusade.

Florence as it was: a digital reconstruction of a medieval city

Florence, Italy, is widely considered the birthplace of the Renaissance in Europe, where artists, poets, architects, and entrepreneurs renewed interest in ancient cultural forms. Using data from primary works, researchers have created a digital reconstruction of the city where users can explore buildings, artworks, and more.

Watch the many different civilizations around the Mediterranean shift power from the year 2500 BCE to 0 BCE in this animated map.

A map of Barcelona from 150 BCE to 2010

Watch Barcelona evolve from Iberian settlements in 150 BCE to Spain’s second-largest city in the modern day by toggling this chronological series of 27 maps. Accompanied by a short contextual blurb, each map shows Barcelona’s steady urbanization over more than two millennia. For those captivated by the interactive, read this interview with one of the project’s key cartographers. He discusses how the mega-map was created and what it reveals about Barcelona’s history.

Explore an interactive timeline of Earth's 4.5-billion-year history to visualize shifting landmasses and oceans, view the locations of significant asteroid impacts, and learn about major geological and biological events.

An AI-built pixel map reimagines New York City as a video game

Isometric NYC is a zoomable pixel-art map that renders the city in game-style perspective (think SimCity), helpfully clarifying the dense geography and architecture. The makers built the project tile-by-tile using satellite data and generative AI. Zoom into building-level views or out to see all five boroughs.

Explore interactive maps from fictional journeys, including 'The Odyssey,' 'Moby-Dick,' and more.

Explore a detailed map of Odysseus' fictional journey from 'The Odyssey.'

The Stations of the Cross reenact Jesus' 'passion,' or suffering

The practice originated with early Christian pilgrims walking the Via Dolorosa—the path Jesus likely look as he walked with his cross to the site of his crucifixion—in Jerusalem and took root in European churches in the fifth century CE as a devotion for those who couldn't travel to the Holy Land. Pope Clement XII fixed the number of stations at 14 in 1731; five of them are based entirely on tradition, rather than scripture.

Visualizing the spread of five major religions across the world

Every major religion has a story that started in a specific place before growing to reach millions. This quick video depicts an illustrated map over the last 5,000 years, showing how Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam grew from their humble beginnings.

Explore the Museum of the World

This collaboration between the British Museum and Google presents an interactive timeline showing artifacts from five world regions. Go back in time and learn about each item from the museum.

Explore the system of ancient Roman roads with this interactive

The Itiner-e map includes unpaved secondary roads that connected farms and towns to the empire's primary routes. Explore routes, view three-dimensional elevation, and compare the old roads to contemporary ones with this sprawling interactive project.

Explore the British Museum's collection across time and continents in this interactive Google Arts and Culture experience.

Take a virtual tour inside Stonehenge, the stone monument built roughly 5,000 years ago.

Prehistoric visitors approached Stonehenge along a processional route known as the Avenue, where the sunrise of the summer solstice aligns with the sarsen stones. This interactive 3D tour recreates that experience with explainer videos and detailed sidebars.

See a map of the Maya civilization and its major historical sites

This interactive map showcases the full geographic extent of the Maya civilization, highlighting major archaeological sites across Mexico and Central America. Explore where Maya cities once stood—and where their ruins can still be visited today.

A collection of contemporary maps from World War II

Newspapers published detailed maps of the conflict in real-time. See different portrayals of the situation, ranging from propaganda maps to speculative maps about the war's outcome. The fascinating depictions reveal how maps can show us the aspirations and intentions of different players in a global conflict.

A virtual tour of Jane Austen's England

This immersive slide show, assembled by the Morgan Library and Museum, takes you through scenes that inspired "Emma," "Northanger Abbey," and "Persuasion," as well as the estates where the 1995 BBC adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice" was shot, along with a few other important locations from Austen's world.

An interactive map tracking conflict in the Middle East

Conflict and peace in the Middle East are constantly in flux. Decision-makers need up-to-date developments – both within individual countries and across the greater MENA region – to identify trends and risks of violence, and opportunities for...

Visualizing the world's population centers

What does population density look like on a global scale? These detailed 3D renders illustrate our biggest urban areas and highlight population trends.

Explore the state of religious freedom worldwide with an interactive data visualization.

Explore a map of global native lands

This interactive map visualizes Indigenous territories across the world. Users can search by location, language, or tribe to explore the histories, cultures, and present-day communities connected to specific lands.

What was the Fourth Crusade?

Originally destined for Jerusalem, the Crusaders became entangled in a Byzantine civil war, and found themselves besieging the greatest city in Christendom. After breaching the sea walls and subjecting the city to the worst sack in its history, they installed a Flemish nobleman as Latin emperor of Constantinople.

During the Medieval Period, urban populations grew significantly

As workers moved from fields to cities throughout the era, large metropolises of enduring strategic importance were formed from Paris, France, to Baghdad, Iraq.

A medieval Italian visits Constantinople

In the tenth century, the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I sent Liudprand of Cremona, an Italian bishop, to Constantinople on a diplomatic mission. He was not successful. But the very undiplomatic report he sent back to the emperor about his experiences provides a unique – and often very entertaining – look at life and ceremony in the Byzantine capital, dramatically different from anything in Liudprand’s Italy.

The Middle Ages, the roughly 1,000-year period between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance, shaped the political and cultural foundations of modern Europe.

Charting 4,000 years of human history

Care to hang all of human history on your wall? This data visualization charts 4,000 years of humanity. This "histomap" was originally published in 1931 and sold for $1 per copy of the 5-foot-long chart. It was said to detail the course of...

A virtual tour of Philadelphia’s American Revolution Museum

Philadelphia’s Old City hosts one of the largest museums on the American Revolution. This virtual tour allows you to view the museum’s exhibits as if you were there by zooming in on descriptions, browsing images, and learning about artifacts, portraits, and more.

Explore the night's sky from anywhere

Stellarium Web is a planetarium running in your web browser. It shows a realistic star map, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. Using its interface, you can click on object's visible at your location on the Earth...

Wish you could experience life on the Western Front of WWI?

Virtual reality offers a new perspective on World War I in this nearly 14-minute video. National WWI Museum and Memorial Public Program Specialist James Taub demonstrates the War Remains VR experience side by side with what he sees through the headset. A grim and detailed simulation of trench warfare combined with Taub's observations and insights.

Search this digital archive of 19th-century "panoramic" maps of US and Canadian cities

The panoramic map was a popular cartographic form used to depict U.S. and Canadian cities and towns during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. You can peruse a gallery of almost 2,000 of them in this digital archive from the Library...

Explore Pompeii with an interactive map packed with 60+ key sites

This tool provides detailed information on major landmarks—from the Villa of Mysteries to the House of the Tragic Poet—and suggests themed walking routes based on visit length. A companion app adds virtual reconstructions and a full audioguide.

Watch the British Empire expand and recede over 5 centuries

This interactive map traces the British Empire from 1450 to today—showing its explosive 19th-century expansion to one-quarter of the world's land and its steady contraction after World War II.

Mapping the Middle East showing Sunni and Shia populations by country

France24's interactive visualization shows where each branch of Islam predominates across the region, from Iran's Shia majority to Saudi Arabia's Sunni dominance. The map helps make Middle Eastern politics (and conflicts) more legible.

Test your historical knowledge with this daily game that shows you 10 historical artifacts and asks you to guess their time period and place of origin.

Watch a tour of a 3D visualization of the Pillars of Creation

Combining observational data from the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes has allowed NASA scientists to create a multiwavelength model of the star-forming region at the heart of the Eagle nebula.

Visualize a model of all of time, where our lives span less than the width of a human hair

The massive model was built across a Mojave Desert lake bed using 800 lights spaced just 10 meters apart. Within the model, the entirety of human civilization appears only in the final centimeter.

Explore an interactive timeline of technological inventions and social structures since 1500.

A collaborative map lets anyone rename the entire world in real time

Rename.world is a playful, community-driven project where users discover, claim, and rename locations across a live global map. It's kind of like Wikipedia meets Google Maps, filtered through the internet's love of chaos and whimsy.

A 1908 toy visualizes how the sun never set on the British Empire

Researchers uncovered an early-1900s children’s toy that romanticized the British Empire: a rotating world map showing where the sun shone on Britain’s far-flung territories. The interactive device also served as an advertisement for "The Children’s Encyclopedia."

Explore Stonehenge up close with photos and a 3D model

This Google Arts & Culture gallery brings Stonehenge into sharp focus through Life magazine archives, Getty Images, and a rotatable Google Earth model—plus a virtual tour that is close enough to spot lichen on the 30-foot sarsen stones.

Take a virtual journey through the world's deserts with Google Earth and BBC

Explore some of the world’s deserts in this “Natural Treasures” collaboration between Google Earth and BBC Earth. Visit the Namib Desert in Namibia where the simplest strategy to escape the heat is to emerge only in the cool of the night....

Where were the Middle Ages?

Many have equated the Middle Ages to European culture and an era beyond the reach of science and art. This false equivalency minimizes, if not erases, the culture and scholarship that flourished worldwide during this time. Medieval history exists in and across many countries, including China, India, Iran, Sudan, and Ethiopia. In this article, a classical archaeologist details evidence of medieval life around the world.