In celebration of my son's twentieth birthday along with my cartography (+ extra credit) interest, we traveled north to Baltimore this past Friday. After eating lunch in Cafe Gia, an eccentric and delicious eatery in the Little Italy neighborhood near the Inner Harbor, we navigated to the Walters Art Museum.
Upon our arrival at the Festival of Maps Exhibition, we spent the next three hours touring and admiring really great works of art that also happened to be maps. Due to it being a weekday, we were able to enjoy the rare and many spectacular maps in a relaxed manner. Some of the historical maps were quite extraordinary and deserved our close inspection. A few of my favorites included: John Smith's early map of Virginia (of course), Leonardo da Vinci's map of Florence, Italy, the Aztec Capital Tenochtitla map, an early map of Cairo, Egypt, and a map of one of Europe's early port cities.
Again, the historical map's artwork and detail were amazing, especially when considering the scale. For example, regarding the port city drawing that I referenced above, hundreds of tiny ships had to be meticulously sketched for just one map. I also appreciated the craftsmanship involved with the mosaic tile world map located on the second floor lobby wall. In addition, the Hubble images and the museum's other artwork(s) were pretty cool.
Although we didn't make it to the fourth level exhibition, we thoroughly enjoyed our recent visit to 'Charm City'.
