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The British Library in London
is home to a staggering
four and a half million maps.

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Mysterious and beautiful,
these rarely seen treasures

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are much more than just physical
depictions of the world.

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A map is definitely by far
the best synthesis of topography,

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the geography of a place,
together with its history,
and of course art as well,

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so you've got great themes
all combining in one

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to produce something of huge beauty.

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Our love affair with maps
is as old as civilisation itself.

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Each map tells its own story
and hides its own secrets.

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Maps delight, they unsettle,

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they reveal deep truths,
not just about where we come from,

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but about who we are.

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A map is a thing of beauty.

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It's a place where perhaps
you express the cosmos, you try and

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bring together the whole view of
the world so you can understand it.

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The medieval masterpiece known as
the Hereford Mappa Mundi is the
world's oldest surviving wall map.

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It still resides where it was made
over 700 years ago,

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a unique insight
into a vanished world.

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It's probably the best way
into the medieval mind

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because in it are drawn together
so many aspects of medieval thinking.

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I think the point of the map

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was to make you say,
"Wow, that's extraordinary!"

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The Hereford Mappa Mundi
has inspired wonder
and caused confusion for centuries.

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It seems to defy logic.

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It's a map
and a medieval encyclopaedia

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that charts both the known world
of the physical

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and the unknown world of belief.

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The Mappa Mundi has spent almost
all of its life in one of Britain's

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oldest ecclesiastical buildings,
Hereford Cathedral.

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There were many Mappa Mundi
in medieval times.

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But the Hereford map is the largest
to have survived intact.

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When it was made in 1300,
Europe stood on the verge
of the Renaissance.

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The poet Dante was about to embark
on his epic work, the Divine Comedy,

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while the Venetian Explorer,
Marco Polo,

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was on his pioneering travels
in Asia.

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Painted on a single sheet
of calf skin, the Mappa Mundi -

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the name means
'cloth of the world' -

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is five feet high
and four feet across.

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It's a map of a teeming world,
rendered in dizzying detail.

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One of the greatest surviving
art works of the middle ages,

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it rarely leaves its glass case.

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The ravages of time and past neglect
have taken their toll,

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leaving parts of it
dark and damaged.

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But it still exerts
an extraordinary power over those
who come into contact with it.

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I remember seeing it
when I was eight years old.

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To me, it was really intriguing

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and fascinating, like seeing a
medical specimen squeezed into a jar.

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Something that captured
my imagination as a child.

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Dominic Harbour came to Hereford
as a student to help prepare
a new exhibition for the map.

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20 years later, he's still here, as
the Cathedral's Commercial director,

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and has seen thousands of visitors
encounter the map
for the first time.

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I think, actually,
it completely disarms anybody
who stands in front of it.

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It's really a total cacophony of
too much going on at the same time,

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which, if you think of
the culture that produced it,

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it's a pretty good description,
really.

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It's kind of unfathomable

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and you have to sort of
immerse yourself into it.

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CRIES OF BATTLE

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The map was the work of a highly
skilled team of scribes and artists.

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Its original creator
left behind his mark.

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'Pray for Richard of Lafford
who had it made',

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reads a caption in Norman French.

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At the heart of the map

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is Jerusalem.

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And at its centre, a tantalising
clue to what was probably the
first act of the map makers,

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a tiny pin prick made 700 years ago

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where a compass was used
to trace the circular tower.

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From that tiny,
ragged hole at its centre,
spreads a map of amazing complexity.

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1,000 written legends,

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500 drawings of the cities
and towns of the known world,

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and the monstrous races
of the unknown world.

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Among them, the Essedones,
eating the corpses of their parents.

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And the Sciapods,
using one huge foot as a sun shade.

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Small wonder, you might think,

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that the Victorian scholar,
Sir Charles Raymond Beasley,
called it 'a monstrosity'.

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The Hereford Mappa Mundi, like other
works of its genre,
are very confusing.

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There are no country boundaries.

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Everything seems out of place.

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However, it requires learning about
the medieval world view

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and trying to come to terms
with the internal

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structure of the map.

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The medieval world map has its own
internal principles of organisation.

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You just have to learn it.

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And where better to start to unravel
the mysteries of this map

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than at the heart of cartographic
learning, London's British Library?

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Its four million maps are under
the care of a curator who is both

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a world expert on cartography
and a trustee of the Mappa Mundi.

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Peter Barber.

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Like other scholars of the map,
he has had a life-long fascination

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with the Mappa Mundi, and knows
how tricky it can be to decipher.

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The first-time viewer would
be completely lost by the map.

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You've got none of the familiar
cities or landmarks.

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All you have is this

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collection of weird-looking animals

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and lots and lots and lots of text
which, being in Latin,
you can't read.

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This is totally incomprehensible
to most people.

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At first glance, it's the
geography of the Hereford map
that is immediately confusing.

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We're used to maps that face North,

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but the Mappa Mundi follows an
older convention and faces East.

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The map as geography
is obviously distorted

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because it's got East
at the top.

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But if you turn it round,...

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all of a sudden

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it does become
slightly more familiar.

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You can recognise immediately Sicily,
which is a triangle.

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That's actually quite accurate.
You see Italy. You see Greece.

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You see most notably
the Mediterranean.

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You have Britain
at the top left-hand corner.

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You have the west coast of Europe.

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Most importantly, down here you have
Africa, or at least North Africa,

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and to the right you have Asia.

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And actually, it's certainly
recognisable, even if distorted.

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It's also full of mysteries.

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You can't begin to unravel everything
and nobody has yet.

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So you can come back to it again
and again with new questions

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and see new things.

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And, um... It is endlessly absorbing.

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Delving deeper into the map,
beyond its physical geography,
another layer of meaning appears.

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The Mappa Mundi is also
a complete history of the world.

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Among the cities and towns,
the rivers and seas,

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the map also depicts events
from the past,

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events separated sometimes
by thousands of years.

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CLAP OF THUNDER

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We see Noah's Ark
and the Crucifixion of Christ,

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but we are also shown Caesar sending
out surveyors to map the world

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before Christ was even born.

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Across its extraordinary surface,
geography, time and history mingle.

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The present collides
with the distant past.

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But the Mappa Mundi's real beauty
is that it is much more
than just a map.

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The Hereford Map was not used
the way we use a map for getting
from point A to point Z.

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It was not a route-finding map.

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It was an imago mundi,
a picture of the world,

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a kind of display of all creation

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laid out, extended,
before the viewer.

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It was a marvel, a mirabilia mundi.

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What the map is for

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is to plot, if you like,
human history.

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That's why it's orientated
with East at the top,

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because human history starts -
this is Christian human history -

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and human history starts
in the East, in the Garden of Eden
with the creation of Adam and Eve.

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The geography you want to think of
as a background.

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So it's history,
from the beginning of time to the
expected, anticipated end of time.

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And where did the map makers
source the knowledge,

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the history, the geography,
that is pictured on the map?

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From writers of the distant past.

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Some, like the scholar Orosius,
pupil of the great St Augustine,

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were writing hundreds of years
before the map was made.

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Others, like the Roman Pliny, had
been dead for well over 1,000 years.

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I think that's a river of gold,
isn't it?

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Peter Barber
and Mappa Mundi scholar Paul Harvey

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have spent their professional lives
deciphering the complex secrets
of the map's many sources.

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I like to think of the Hereford map
as a patchwork quilt.

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There's lots of little bits
and if you know something
about the sources,

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you can identify...this
little patch came from here.

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You couldn't create
something like the Hereford Map

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without relying on a great many
different sources,

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and we think the map certainly drew
on seven, eight, ten sources
fairly directly,

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but possibly rather more.

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And this would have been
the sort of illustrative source
a map maker might have used.

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One can discern
a vast number of sources,

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but it is very difficult since all
of the sources tended to repeat
what the other sources had said.

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For instance, though
in the Hereford world map, you
get a specific reference to Orosius,

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Orosius included a lot of
information that came from Pliny.

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Pliny's enormous text
on natural history,

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which is really
a history of the world
and everything in the world,

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and the miniature
expresses it beautifully.

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On the left you can see Pliny
writing his text and outside,
through the window,

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you can see all the animals of the
world, all the natural features,

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that image really does express the
encyclopaedic vision of the
classical writers

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which is carried through
to medieval Mappa Mundi.

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The map's next layer of content,
and by far its most bewildering,

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owes much to Pliny.

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His encyclopaedia lists all the
animals and peoples of the world.

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So too does the map.

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At first, we see creatures
we would recognise.

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Here's a giant lizard
basking in the sun.

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There's an elephant.

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But the further we move out
from Jerusalem at the centre,

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the wilder the world gets.

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The Mappa Mundi, of course,
is one of the finest examples
of a medieval bestiary.

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What I find interesting about
the beasties on the Mappa

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is what you've got
and where you've got them.

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You've got the worst one,
the scariest ones,

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the really bizarre ones with big feet
over their heads as umbrellas,

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and the ones cannibalising their own
parents, these kind of things,

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they're all in Africa, Asia,

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they're in the far north of
Russia and the Arctic and the Baltic.

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And that very much reflects
the prejudice of the time

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against these unknown parts
of the world.

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Here's the Griste in Scandinavia,
who make handy blankets from
the skins of their enemies.

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Next to them live the Cynocephali,
recognisably human but
with the heads of dogs.

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Then there's the Hermaphrodites,
with male and female genitals.

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And the headless Blemyes,
with eyes in their chests.

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These monstrous races from the
classical past are partly on the map

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to entertain, and partly to
preserve classical knowledge.

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But their presence also serves
a larger purpose,

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that goes to the heart of the map's
deeper religious meaning.

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These are the fabulous races,
the so-called monstrous races,

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from Classical Antiquity.

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Augustine talked about
these fabulous peoples

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as testifying to the power of God,

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that if God could create these
fabulous peoples,

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then he could make bodies suffer
eternally in the torments of hell.

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For him, this was proof of the
Resurrection with eternal damnation.

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So this was again using mirabilia, a
marvel, to prove a theological point.

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So theology is the Mappa Mundi's
final layer of meaning.

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And the map's very complexity
serves, it turns out,
a very specific purpose.

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Well, I think the fact that the map
is a picture of extraordinary

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confusion is actually extremely
important for understanding it.

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The tremendous visual
disarray of the map is a sign
of man's fallen vision of the world.

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In a way, it directs attention away
from the world, away from trying to
understand the world,

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towards trying to achieve
an understanding of,
and a vision of,

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things outside the world,
of heavenly things.

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The French philosopher
Hugh of St Victor,

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writing when the map was made,
wrote, "The whole world is like a
book written by the finger of God".

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And there he is, God in the
form of Christ in Majesty,

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above the circle of the world.

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To his left,
the blessed enter heaven.

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To his right, the damned are
ushered into the jaws of hell.

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This is judgement day,
the end of time,

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the moment that explains the map
and gives it its deeper meaning.

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You see a marvellous recreation
of the classical and Christian world,

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and of a world that was
dominated by faith.

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A world too which in a way put the
world in its possibly proper place.

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There are also scenes in the
corners and they put everything

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into context, because at the top,
you have the last judgement.

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Even more movingly,
at the bottom right,

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you have a scene of a huntsman,
of a human being looking back
wistfully at the world,

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but being told to proceed.

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And around the world, you have...

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The disc containing the world
is fastened to eternity,

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by thongs which read MORS,
or Latin for "death".

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It is a very, very sober image
or idea, which makes all of sudden,

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the whole of this enormous
world in the middle

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seem somewhat less important.

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Here is the world, says the map.

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Enjoy it. But remember
that you will soon leave it.

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The huntsman, about to depart the
world, takes one last look back.

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00:20:03,840 --> 00:20:08,880
But on the ground,
his squire calls out, "Passe avant."

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Pass on, without regret,

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to the next world.

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It's a memento mori,

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00:20:18,360 --> 00:20:20,800
that we may live in this world,

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00:20:20,800 --> 00:20:24,440
the world is full of good things,
it's full of difficulties -

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political relations between France
and England, and so on.

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It's full of history,...

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00:20:31,240 --> 00:20:34,360
but it's also temporal.

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It comes to an end, as far
as our lives come to an end.

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00:20:40,720 --> 00:20:46,800
So the map, whilst teeming with
life, is actually about death.

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00:20:46,800 --> 00:20:49,960
And about how,
for the medieval mind,

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belief in the next world
was the only certainty.

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00:21:01,320 --> 00:21:06,600
700 years on from its creation,
that idea of belief and certainty

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00:21:06,600 --> 00:21:12,040
continues to fascinate and inspire
artists, like Turner Prize winner,
Grayson Perry.

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I was asked to give a lecture
in Hereford.

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I got there bit early and thought
I'd go and see the Mappa Mundi.

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I hadn't thought about it before.

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00:21:24,680 --> 00:21:28,480
I was just blown away by it,
because I got there
and I had it all to myself.

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00:21:28,480 --> 00:21:33,880
There was me and the guide,
and she took me through it and I
was just entranced by this thing.

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00:21:33,880 --> 00:21:38,400
Grayson's Map Of Nowhere,
made in 2008,

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borrows much
from the Hereford Map -

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its circular scheme,
its wild mixture of image and text.

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00:21:47,080 --> 00:21:52,880
His picture is a very personal take
on the idea of mapping belief.

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00:21:52,880 --> 00:21:57,720
Like all my works, I didn't start
with a super-clear plan.

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00:21:57,720 --> 00:22:00,400
That would be boring, to do that.

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00:22:00,400 --> 00:22:03,840
I just worked my way across.
I started in the top left hand corner

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00:22:03,840 --> 00:22:07,640
and then three months later, I get
to the bottom right hand corner.

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00:22:07,640 --> 00:22:10,760
And in between something
has happened, and that's
how it works for me.

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00:22:10,760 --> 00:22:18,280
The idea, to a certain extent,
I'm parodying the idea of the
intellectual constructs of religion.

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00:22:20,880 --> 00:22:23,400
The bottom scene is all these people.

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00:22:23,400 --> 00:22:28,840
I sort of imagine them on a kind of
Ruritanian pilgrimage,

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00:22:28,840 --> 00:22:35,600
and they're all making their way
up this mountain, to this
holy shrine site at the top,

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which is illuminated
by a shaft of heavenly light.

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00:22:39,360 --> 00:22:43,320
But if you follow the shaft up,
it's coming out of my bum hole,

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00:22:43,320 --> 00:22:45,640
so it sort of...

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That's what I was saying about that.

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00:22:50,760 --> 00:22:55,040
This map is like the Mappa Mundi
in that it's a kind of world view,

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00:22:55,040 --> 00:22:59,080
but it's very much a personal,
individualistic world view.

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00:22:59,080 --> 00:23:03,840
I don't presume to be
the voice of anybody else but myself,

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00:23:03,840 --> 00:23:08,200
but obviously
I've shared values with other people,

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being a fully paid-up member
of the chattering classes.

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00:23:17,600 --> 00:23:22,400
Grayson's picture and the
Mappa Mundi have much in common.

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00:23:22,400 --> 00:23:26,840
Both are visual encyclopaedias
of a complex world.

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00:23:26,840 --> 00:23:31,560
Both have at their heart
questions of faith and belief.

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00:23:33,080 --> 00:23:36,360
But there's one
crucial difference - age.

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00:23:37,520 --> 00:23:42,360
Time and past neglect have taken
their toll on the Hereford map.

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00:23:42,360 --> 00:23:47,200
The crucial scene of Christ
in Majesty is dark and damaged.

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00:23:47,200 --> 00:23:53,360
The rivers and seas,
once vividly coloured,
have faded to a murky brown.

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00:23:53,360 --> 00:23:59,760
But now, using the latest scholarly
research, the map is being restored
to something like its former glory.

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00:24:08,080 --> 00:24:13,440
The Folio Society
is preparing the first authentic
reproduction of the Mappa Mundi,

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00:24:13,440 --> 00:24:19,080
digitally cleaning up the faded
original, and restoring its colour.

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00:24:22,840 --> 00:24:26,760
The rivers are returning
to a vivid blue.

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00:24:26,760 --> 00:24:30,040
The long-faded green of the sea
is being restored.

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00:24:30,040 --> 00:24:32,400
Christ shines out once more.

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00:24:35,520 --> 00:24:42,160
Even the ivy around the map,
invisible for perhaps hundreds
of years, grows again.

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00:24:46,000 --> 00:24:50,080
At the British Library,
Mappa Mundi scholars are gathering

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00:24:50,080 --> 00:24:53,520
to see the finished results
for the first time.

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00:25:02,040 --> 00:25:06,920
The Hereford map has
never been digitally photographed
in its entirety before.

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00:25:06,920 --> 00:25:13,400
Will the wonders of 21st century
technology restore the glories
of 700 years ago?

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00:25:18,280 --> 00:25:25,160
It's strange seeing
the original background colour
with these fresh colours.

300
00:25:25,160 --> 00:25:29,320
It's very much brighter
than the original.

301
00:25:29,320 --> 00:25:32,240
It's visually much more interesting.

302
00:25:32,240 --> 00:25:39,080
I'm really pleased with it.
I've been involved in giving
advice on various aspects of it.

303
00:25:39,080 --> 00:25:43,160
But when you look at it
as it is, in its final state,

304
00:25:43,160 --> 00:25:49,880
you can see the birds and the animals
quite, quite clearly.

305
00:25:49,880 --> 00:25:54,480
This is going to be
a tremendous aid to people who are

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00:25:54,480 --> 00:25:59,440
studying it, not only in detail
but also from the wider perspective,

307
00:25:59,440 --> 00:26:02,120
as an ensemble of information.

308
00:26:03,640 --> 00:26:08,680
It's striking now, the contrast
between the rivers
and the sea as well.

309
00:26:08,680 --> 00:26:10,440
I love it, I absolutely love it.

310
00:26:10,440 --> 00:26:15,640
I have to keep on telling myself
I'm not looking at the original,
this is not what it was.

311
00:26:16,840 --> 00:26:20,520
But as a vision of the original,
it's absolutely superb, I think.

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00:26:25,440 --> 00:26:28,360
It gets across
what an extraordinary spectacle

313
00:26:28,360 --> 00:26:32,480
the original must have been, it
really helps us envision what this

314
00:26:32,480 --> 00:26:41,200
would have been like to come across
in the cathedral as you walked up
the aisle, and came across this

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00:26:41,200 --> 00:26:44,680
absolutely astonishing object.

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00:26:47,320 --> 00:26:51,240
This authentic reproduction of the
map opens up new opportunities for

317
00:26:51,240 --> 00:26:55,040
the future appreciation
of the Mappa Mundi.

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00:26:55,040 --> 00:26:58,400
It brings the past
right into the present,

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00:26:58,400 --> 00:27:04,480
marking the latest chapter
in its extraordinary ability
to fascinate us and draw us in.

320
00:27:13,120 --> 00:27:17,520
The Hereford map
is crucially important,

321
00:27:17,520 --> 00:27:21,480
because it is
the only surviving example

322
00:27:21,480 --> 00:27:29,880
of a large, almost monumental
medieval Mappa Mundi.

323
00:27:32,920 --> 00:27:37,320
When I look at the medieval past,
it makes me think about what is

324
00:27:37,320 --> 00:27:44,480
going to be left of our
civilisation 1,000 years from now.

325
00:27:44,480 --> 00:27:47,960
What will be around
1,000 years from now?

326
00:27:47,960 --> 00:27:50,080
Maybe just pieces of art.

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00:27:53,200 --> 00:27:57,240
Hereford's Mappa Mundi
is many things.

328
00:27:57,240 --> 00:28:00,680
An encyclopaedia
of all the world's knowledge,

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00:28:00,680 --> 00:28:02,280
a memento mori,

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00:28:02,280 --> 00:28:06,040
a remarkable piece of medieval art.

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00:28:06,040 --> 00:28:10,480
It remains a unique testament
to a vanished world,

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00:28:10,480 --> 00:28:17,240
and a vivid illustration of the
depth, complexity and artistic
genius of maps themselves.

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00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:27,560
To find out more about the maps in
this series, and to explore the new
world of digital mapping,

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00:28:27,560 --> 00:28:33,080
go to bbc.co.uk/beautyofmaps

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00:28:51,240 --> 00:28:55,000
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd 

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00:28:55,000 --> 00:28:57,040
E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk