BUCHAREST OLD MAPS MUSEUM
By: BUCHAREST-TRAVEL.COM
Photographed In: Bucharest, Romania
Date Uploaded:2019-23-02
Description: Old Maps Museum Bucharest is the only one of its kind in Romania and the fourth in Europe taking into account the works exhibited here
Bucharest Old Maps Museum was open in 2003 and it exhibits more than 900 maps and articles related to navigation, astronomy and also temporary exhibitions and events. It is the only museum of its kind open in Romania.
We visited the museum in the winter of 2018-2019, in January and it was a great experience. The first thing you see when you enter this Old Maps Museum Bucharest is a large hall with the first room on the left where there are many of the hard pieces of the museum. First of all, you will see a huge Earth-Globe. It was a gift from the President of France, Francois Mitterrand for the Romanian President Ion Iliescu.
EARTH AT MAPS MUSEUM BUCHAREST
By: BUCHAREST-TRAVEL.COM
Photographed In: Bucharest, Romania
Date Uploaded:2019-23-02
Description: This Earth Globe was a gift from the French President Francois Mitterrand for the Romanian President Ion Iliescu who donated to the Old Maps Museum Bucharest
The guide will surely tell you more about a second interesting piece of history exhibited at this museum: a map of the moon. It is not a map designed with new technologies, but a map made in the 18th century and actually a detail of a more comprehensive work whose author was J. G. Doppelmaier. He published his work called Tabula Selenographica at about 1740 in nowadays Germany. He used this to continue the work of two great astronomers Johannes Hevelius who lived in the 17th century and Battista Riccioli and who studied the surface of the Moon giving names to different areas of this planet.
MAP OF THE MOON
By: BUCHAREST-TRAVEL.COM
Photographed In: Bucharest, Romania
Date Uploaded:2019-23-02
Description: This is the moon map made by Doppelmaier in Nuremberg at about 1740 and it is also exhibited at Old Maps Museum Bucharest
MERCATOR MAPS AT OLD MAPS MUSEUM BUCHAREST
People started to learn more about old maps after an interesting discovery: the Piri Rheis map of South America, Western Africa and Antarctica before becoming a land of ice. Everybody started to talk about an ancient civilization who traveled all around the world and made maps. That Piri Rheis’s strange map can be seen at Topkapi Palace in Istanbul and it was used by Gerard Kremer, also known as Mercator later in the 16th century. Mercator was a great scholar and he made a lot of maps. At least two of them are exhibited at the Old Maps Museum in Bucharest. One of them is about Europe.
MERCATOR EUROPE MAPS MUSEUM
By: BUCHAREST-TRAVEL.COM
Photographed In: Bucharest, Romania
Date Uploaded:2019-23-02
Description: This map of Europe was made by Gerardus Mercator in Amsterdam at about 1578 and is a copy of Ptolemy map from the 2nd century AD
AMERICAS MAP AT MAPS MUSEUM
By: BUCHAREST-TRAVEL.COM
Photographed In: Bucharest, Romania
Date Uploaded:2019-23-02
Description: This is an old map where you can see the two Americas
The same Mercator also traveled to Egypt and many other places and made a lot of interesting maps, he also found ancient sources and designed new maps with territories which would have been lost otherwise. For instance, at Bucharest Old Maps and Books Museum you can see an ancient map of the Balkans, with Dacia, a land conquered by the Romans in 106 AD and where is Romania today.
DACIA MAP MERCATOR BUCHAREST
By: BUCHAREST-TRAVEL.COM
Photographed In: Bucharest, Romania
Date Uploaded:2019-23-02
Description: This is on old map of the Balkans printed in Amsterdam at about 1730 based on the Ptolemy map of the area in Antiquity and can be seen at Old Maps Museum in Bucharest
WHEN TO VISIT OLD MAPS MUSEUM BUCHAREST
Old Maps Museum in Bucharest is open from Wednesday to Sunday from 10 AM to 6 PM. Every first Saturday of the month you can visit it until 9 PM, so if you are in Bucharest and the lunch takes too long, you still have time to see. According to the Romanian legislation, the museum is also closed on January 1, 2 and 24, the first and the second day at Easter time, on May 1st, June 1st, August 15th, November 30th, December 25th and 26th for Christmas. It is also closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.
TIMETABLE OLD MAPS MUSEUM BUCHAREST
By: BUCHAREST-TRAVEL.COM
Photographed In: Bucharest, Romania
Date Uploaded:2019-23-02
Description: Old Maps Museum in Bucharest can be visited from Wednesday to Sunday from 10 AM to 6 PM but there are days when it is closed as you can learn more from our post
WHO FOUNDED OLD MAPS MUSEUM IN BUCHAREST?
The Museum of Old Maps was founded in 2003 by the former Prime-Minister of Romania, Mr. Adrian Nastase and his wife Daniela Nastase, as a great part of the exhibition was donated by them to the Romanian state. Thus the museum came into being and has got more than 900 maps and other hundreds of old books which right now cannot be exhibited due to the lack of space in the building. And a few words about the building: London Street is in an interesting area of Bucharest. Lots of members of the Romanian Communist Party had their own houses here. The building we are talking about belonged to a rich Armenian who donated to Argentina and, thus, it housed for a long time the Consulate of this country in Bucharest. Anyway, coming back to the exhibition donated by the former Prime-minister Adrian Nastase, charged and imprisoned for corruption after 2010 and who also tried to commit suicide because of it, many of the maps are related to geopolitical situations in history and this is one of the Nastase’s legacies it worth remembering. Like this war maps.
WAR MAPS BUCHAREST
By: BUCHAREST-TRAVEL.COM
Photographed In: Bucharest, Romania
Date Uploaded:2019-23-02
Description: A part of the exhibitions are designed to make you learn more about our recent pas with the wars and geopolitical strategies
FARES FOR OLD MAPS MUSEUM BUCHAREST
Adults will pay 10 RON for visiting the Museum, which almost 2 Euros, students will pay 2,5 RON and seniors 5 RON. You are allowed to take pictures with no blitz camera, smartphone and so on for free. If you want to visit temporary exhibitions, you will have to pay from 5 to 15 RON. For French or English Guide you will also have to pay 50 RON, which is about 10 Euros.
Anyway, one of the most interesting things you will see in this museum is the ceilings. They were painted with astronomical, astrological and other symbols related to longitude, latitude and exploring adventures absolutely amazing and in a very short time, as our guide told us.
BUCHAREST PAINTING AT MAPS MUSEUM
By: BUCHAREST-TRAVEL.COM
Photographed In: Bucharest, Romania
Date Uploaded:2019-23-02
Description: There are also exhibited plans about Bucharest especially from the 20th century and also interesting paintings about the Romanian capital
OLD MAPS MUSEUM CEILING
By: BUCHAREST-TRAVEL.COM
Photographed In: Bucharest, Romania
Date Uploaded:2019-23-02
Description: There are about 16 rooms in the museum and each one has got its own paintings on the ceilings with astronomical details about Earth and solar system
ROOF MAPS MUSEUM BUCHAREST
By: BUCHAREST-TRAVEL.COM
Photographed In: Bucharest, Romania
Date Uploaded:2019-23-02
Description: Some of the ceilings at Old Maps Museum Bucharest make you think about ancient astronomy and astrology as well
WALL PAINTING MAPS MUSEUM
By: BUCHAREST-TRAVEL.COM
Photographed In: Bucharest, Romania
Date Uploaded:2019-23-02
Description: No doubt that the scholars who designed Earth had to look at the stars to measure longitude and this is an interesting part of the walls and their paintings in this museum
If you need some more reasons to visit this museum when you travel to Bucharest, well, here you are. An ancient king who ruled the nowadays Romania in Antiquity, called Decebalus and who was defeated by the Roman Emperor Traian, as you can see at the
NATIONAL HISTORY MUSEUM BUCHAREST, hid his treasure under a river. On o map exhibited here and made by Ortelius in 1595 at Anvers, you can read a short note about this story: it is about the river Sargetia where the Dacian King buried a lot of gold and silver. According to the Roman scholar Dio Cassius, the king changed the course of the river, put the treasure in the ground and, then let the river come back on its old course. The treasure has never been found.
Anyway, maps could have been made due to the discover of longitude and this happened, officially, in 1720. It was a conquest and the British Empire put 20,000 GBP for anyone who could build a watch to, exactly, count the time from the old continent to America in order to define longitude. It was in 1761 when it happened and the famous No.4 clock left England for Jamaica. It proved to be good and thus, after 1779 James Cook could make the maps of the Pacific Ocean and the continents with the right longitude. The sailors changed the history and at
OLD MAPS MUSEUM BUCHAREST you can see two old ships as a tribute to them.
OLD SHIPS AT BUCHAREST MAPS MUSEUM
By: BUCHAREST-TRAVEL.COM
Photographed In: Bucharest, Romania
Date Uploaded:2019-23-02
Description: The Old Maps Museum in Bucharest is not only about maps it is also about explorers and their stories since ancient times
In 2021, The Old Maps and Books Museum Bucharest will be the host of The International Conferences on the History of Cartography.
MUSEUM OF OLD MAPS AND BOOKS BUCHAREST
By: BUCHAREST-TRAVEL.COM
Photographed In: Bucharest, Romania
Date Uploaded:2019-23-02
Description: Museum of Old Maps and Books in Bucharest is on London Street 39
MAP FOR THE OLD MAPS MUSEUM BUCHAREST
