Welcome to the Digital Blaeu

This fine example of the fourth volume of Johannes Blaeu’s “Theatrum Orbis Terrarum” from 1647,
is a complete atlas of the British Isles.

Only on this site, we offer the opportunity to purchase large digital image files of the maps from this atlas.

Simply browse the index of maps to find the map you're looking for.

Please read our License agreement before purchasing images - thank you.

Blaeu’s first topographical atlas appeared in 1630 in one volume and was gradually expanded . By 1640 it was in 3 volumes and contained just 4 British maps. His chief rival, the HONDIUS – Jansson atlas contained 18 maps. Both joined a race to make their 4th volumes a complete atlas of the British Isles. Blaeu was first, publishing his magnificent work in 1645, one year before that of Jansson. Although his father, Willem, probably set the ball rolling in the early stages and in his doteage, the work would have to be attributed to Johannes, being completed 7 years after his father’s death.

Index of Blaeu British maps on this site
Anglia Regnum	Atlas frontispiece	Bedfordshire map	Beds & Bucks map	Berkshire map	Brecon map	Britannia Heptarchy map	Buckinghamshire map	Camarthenshire map	Cambridgeshire map
Cardiganshire map	Channel Islands map	Cornwall map	Cumbria map	Denbighshire map	Derbyshire map	Devonshire map	Dorsetshire map	Durham map	East Anglia map
East Yorkshire map	Essex map	Flintshire map	Glamorganshire map	Gloucestershire map	Britain and Scotland map	Hampshire map	Herefordshire map	Hertfordshire map	Holy Island map
Huntingdonshire map	Isle of Man map	Kent map	Lancashire map	Leicestershire map	Lincolnshire map	Middlesex map	Monmouthshire map	Montgomeryshire map	Norfolk map
North Yorkshire map	Northamptonshire map	Northumbria map	Nottinghamshire map	Oxfordshire map	Pembroke map	Radnorshire map	Rutlandshire map	Shropshire map	Somerset map
Staffordshire map	Suffolk map	Surrey map	Sussex map	Wales map	West Yorkshire map	Westmorland map	Wiltshire map	Worcester and Warwickshire	Yorkshire

Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571 - Oct 21 1638, Amsterdam), was a Dutch cartographer, atlas maker and publisher.

As the son of a well-to-do herring salesman, he was predestined to succeed his father in the trade, but his interests lay more in Mathematics and Astronomy. Between 1594 and 1596 as a student of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe he qualified as an instrument and globe maker.

Once he returned to the Netherlands, he made country maps and world globes, and as he possessed his own printing works, he was able to regularly produce country maps in an atlas format, some of which appeared in the Atlas Novus published in 1635. In 1633 he was appointed map-maker of the Dutch East India Company.

He had two sons, Johannes and Cornelis Blaeu, who continued their father's mapmaking and publishing business after his death in 1638.


	Website copyright © The Digital Blaeu 2010 \| Disclaimer \| Privacy \| Contact us	Website by QR8