The Agas Map

¶What is the Agas map?

Civitas Londinum is a bird’s-eye view of London first printed from woodblocks in about 1561. Widely known as the Agas map, from a spurious attribution to surveyor Ralph Agas (c.1540-1621), the map offers a richly detailed view both of the buildings and streets of the city and of its environment. No copies survive from 1561, but a modified version was printed in 1633. In the later version of the map, the Stuart coat of arms replaces the Elizabethan arms, and the Royal Exchange, which opened in 1571, occupies the triangle created by the convergence of Threadneedle and Cornhill Streets.

View the full map.

¶MoEML and the Map

For MoEML, the map is a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that allows us to visualize literary and historical data, a material object with its own historical and aesthetic interest, and a text in its own right. Our new version of the Agas Map, first released in 2015, has an interface based on the OpenLayers 3 library. The map image was freshly scanned by the London Metropolitan Archives and then stitched together and edited by the MoEML team to create an ideal text. While we redraw all the streets, sites, and boundaries, we continue to develop the interface to provide maximum interactivity and drawing capabilities to our users. Our full scholarly edition of the map will include critical materials about the genre, accuracy, provenance, preservation, and subsequent adaptations of the map.

For instructions on how to navigate the map and use its various features, see How to Use MoEML’s Agas Map.

© The Agas map is used on this website by kind permission of the City of London, London Metropolitan Archives. Copyright law prohibits further reproduction of these images in any form under any circumstances. More information.

For site identifications, we are particularly indebted to the work of Adrian Prockter and Robert Taylor, A to Z of Elizabethan London (London: Harry Margary, 1979).

Cite this page

MLA citation

Jenstad, Janelle. The Agas Map. The Map of Early Modern London, edited by Janelle Jenstad, U of Victoria, 26 Jun. 2020, mapoflondon.uvic.ca/map.htm.

Chicago citation

Jenstad, Janelle. The Agas Map. The Map of Early Modern London. Ed. Janelle Jenstad. Victoria: University of Victoria. Accessed June 26, 2020. https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/map.htm.

APA citation

Jenstad, J. 2020. The Agas Map. In J. Jenstad (Ed), The Map of Early Modern London. Victoria: University of Victoria. Retrieved from https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/map.htm.

RIS file (for RefMan, EndNote etc.)

Provider: University of Victoria
Database: The Map of Early Modern London
Content: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

TY  - ELEC
A1  - Jenstad, Janelle
ED  - Jenstad, Janelle
T1  - The Agas Map
T2  - The Map of Early Modern London
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/06/26
CY  - Victoria
PB  - University of Victoria
LA  - English
UR  - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/map.htm
UR  - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/xml/standalone/map.xml
ER  -

RefWorks

RT Web Page
SR Electronic(1)
A1 Jenstad, Janelle
A6 Jenstad, Janelle
T1 The Agas Map
T2 The Map of Early Modern London
WP 2020
FD 2020/06/26
RD 2020/06/26
PP Victoria
PB University of Victoria
LA English
OL English
LK https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/map.htm

TEI citation

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