Here are maps that survived wars, regimes, and revolutions — not because they were valued, but because they were forgotten.

 

Some were reused when paper was scarce - a map of Cuba mounted on the reverse of a Second World War map of Berlin, the roads of one ruined city shining faintly through another place entirely, a haunting map of Hiroshima printed just weeks before destruction.

Britain’s only Professor of Cartography, James Cheshire's book The Library of Lost Maps, explores the hidden collection of thousands of maps in a room at University College London. He joins us to tell us why paper maps still matter.

 

Maps tell us what was ignored, how ideology, hope and catastrophe have been drawn onto paper; they tell us how power wanted the world to look, and they reveal hidden patterns in everyday life.

And when map libraries disappear, it isn’t just paper that vanishes — it’s memory.

 

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