With your finger on the map: As early as the 16th century maps, atlases, and books dealing with geography were collected at the Viennese Court Library. In 1906 came the foundation of a special collection for geography: today’s Department of Maps. Associated to the Department is the world’s only Globe Museum.

On the basis of a tradition going back centuries of collecting and conserving, the Department of Maps offers its clients internationally important cartographic material (maps, plans, atlases, globes, geographical reliefs, models of fortresses, cartographic facsimiles, and much more), geographic-topographical views (drawings of cities and landscapes), as well as comprehensive holdings of historical and modern specialist literature on geography.

The regional focus is on central Europe, especially the territory of the Republic of Austria and of the former Danube Monarchy. Thanks to the obligatory delivery of material, on the basis of the Law of the Media, maps and atlases currently published in Austria and specialist books are present almost in their entirety. Of foreign publications we collect preeminently official maps and literature with a significance transcending particular regions.

Without a doubt the most precious object in the Department of Maps, declared in 2004 to be a world heritage document, is the so-called Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem, a baroque collection in 50 volumes with 2,400 gloriously coloured maps, city maps, and pictures. But beyond that you can discover in the Department of Maps many interesting works of the cartographer’s art. In all, the holdings of the Department number more than 260,000 map pages that can also be researched online.