Hondius Map of Europe, 1638

The story of this map

Henricus Hondius ran one of the great Amsterdam map houses of the seventeenth century, carrying on the atlas his father Jodocus had built on Mercator’s plates. This map of Europe, titled Europa Exactissime Descripta, was engraved on a plate dated 1631 and printed in the 1638 edition of the Mercator-Hondius atlas, when Dutch mapmaking was at its confident best.

It is a map that invites you to lean in. The whole continent is here, from Iceland in the top corner down to the boot of Italy and the islands of the Mediterranean, and east as far as the Black Sea. Kingdoms and regions are washed in hand-applied colour, mountains are drawn as tiny shaded mounds, and the seas are alive with fine engraved ripples. The place names alone are a pleasure: familiar cities under half-familiar Latin spellings.

Historically this is Europe in the middle of the Thirty Years’ War, drawn from Amsterdam at the height of the Dutch Golden Age. Borders had a habit of moving, which is one reason old maps of the whole continent feel so much more open than a modern one.

It belongs to our Antique Maps of Europe collection and is the natural anchor for a wall of European maps, with our Ortelius Italy or Mercator Scotland alongside it. It also pairs with our Hondius world map from the same firm. Each print is made to order on archival matte paper and framed in the country of delivery.

Before and after

Left: the archive scan exactly as published. Right: the file that goes to the printer.

Archive scanRestored

Restoration notes

Restoration plan: crop scan margins, balance colour cast and levels while keeping the paper tone, remove library stamps and scanner artefacts if present, gentle sharpening. No repainting of original content.

Every print carries its archive credit on the packing slip. Paper tone and small imperfections of the original are kept on purpose; nothing is redrawn.