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The Hereford Mappa Mundi (ca 1285), the largest medieval map known to still exist.Still preserved in Hereford cathedral, the map was almost sold in the 80'shttp://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20140110-the-beauty-of-maps
The Hereford map is not the first image you can spot at the beginning of the documentary because it's a wall map.Of course it seems to be a quite a long “boring” 30 min. documentary but it's worth it. That documentary tries to highlight the way medieval people were seeing their world. That map is revealing their vision through a Christian point with knowledge of the time, backed by classical authors like Pliny, and the medieval philosophy e.g. the four letters M-O-R-S nailed around the map (a kind of memento mori), Jerusalem as the centre of the world, a fabulous bestiary, rivers, seas, an East axis (vs the common North axis today)That map reflects not only geographical knowledge of the time but instills a path to how medieval civilisation was considering the world.
