This exhibition invites visitors on a journey to the borders between reality and fiction, exploring the links between cartography and the imagination. For while maps usually trace the outlines of known lands, they also give shape to imaginary territories that extend, interpret, or personalize the real world.
Ranging from the Earthly Paradise to Atlantis, from El Dorado to the world of Narnia, and from the territories of Game of Thrones to those of Final Fantasy, visitors discover numerous cartographic masterpieces held in the Department of Maps and Plans at the BnF, as well as major loans from the Guimet Museum, the British Library, the Bodleian Libraries of Oxford, the Royal Library of Belgium, and the Vatican Apostolic Library. Brought together in this way, these exceptional pieces create a dialogue across different spaces and times, sparking reflection, amusement, or reverie, and reminding us that we must imagine the world in order to represent it. Exhibition Path – A Journey in Four Stops The exhibition takes visitors of all ages closer to treasures rarely shown to the public, unfolding in four stops. The first transports us into unexplored worlds, plunging the visitor into the heart of cartographic iconography. Beyond geographical layouts, maps incorporate fabulous figures borrowed from ancient and religious sources and transmitted through medieval encyclopedias. These creatures populate the margins of known lands and testify to how the imagination projects onto territories yet to be discovered. Visitors explore five continents accompanied by chimera-like creatures that would gradually disappear from maps in the 18th century. The second stop presents legendary worlds—imaginary places once believed to be real. Blending reality and wonder, cartographers assigned them terrestrial locations: Atlantis, the Kingdom of Prester John, El Dorado, and the Earthly Paradise take shape on the globe. This section leads visitors to the edge of earthly and celestial worlds. Non-Western maps, particularly Buddhist ones featuring Mount Meru, demonstrate a desire to anchor mythical places with strong symbolic and cosmological significance within space. The third explores literary worlds, where fiction liberates geographical constructions from reality. These imaginary maps lend consistency to narrative universes, from realism to fantasy. Visitors wander from Treasure Island to Narnia, from Final Fantasy to Game of Thrones. To conclude the journey, the fourth stop considers the map in its evocative and subjective dimension, creating a dialogue between historical works and contemporary artists' works inspired by cartography. Art deconstructs the cartographic device to reveal the construction of a collective vision of space, showing that every representation of the world stems from the imagination.
Price: From 0 to 10 euros.
Source: paris.fr — photo: BnF