Piri Reis World Map (1513)

The Piri Reis map is the surviving western third of a world map drawn in 1513 by the Ottoman admiral and cartographer Piri Reis. It is painted on parchment and is held in the Topkapı Palace Museum in Istanbul. The fragment shows the Atlantic Ocean with the coasts of Spain, North Africa, Brazil and the Caribbean.

It is one of the earliest surviving maps to show the Americas, drawn only two decades after Columbus's first voyage in 1492.

How the map was made

Piri Reis wrote notes on the map explaining that he compiled it from about twenty sources, including Portuguese charts, Arab maps and a map that he said had been drawn by Columbus. This was the usual method of the time: chartmakers combined existing maps rather than surveying new coasts. The map has a network of compass lines and decorative ships and animals.

Piri Reis presented a map to Sultan Selim I in 1517 after the Ottoman conquest of Egypt. The fragment was rediscovered in 1929 in the Topkapı Palace library.

Separating fact from myth

Popular claims that the map shows Antarctica without ice or was made with lost ancient knowledge are not supported by map historians. The southern coastline on the map is best explained as a stretched version of the South American coast, a convention of early sixteenth-century cartography. The map's real importance is as evidence of how knowledge of the New World spread through the Mediterranean world within a generation.

Key facts

Questions about this map

Does the map show Antarctica?

Map historians say it does not; the southern coast is an eastward extension of South America.

Who was Piri Reis?

An Ottoman admiral and cartographer who also wrote the Kitab-ı Bahriye, a sailing guide to the Mediterranean.

Can I see it?

It is held in Topkapı Palace Museum, but is not always on display.