How Leonardo da Vinci made a 'satellite' map in 1502

It was a feat of technological and symbolic imagination. And it was pretty accurate, too.

Leonardo da Vinci’s known for his art and inventions — but also his groundbreaking maps, like this one of Imola, Italy. In this episode of Vox Almanac, Vox’s Phil Edwards explores how it was made.

Further reading:

1) John Pinto’s History of the Ichnographic City Plan is useful to understand the history of these maps.
2) Check out Portraying the City in Early Modern Europe: Measurement, Representation, and Planning by Hilary Ballon and David Friedman for more info.
3) If you want to dig deeper into early maps, Jessica Maier’s Mapping Past and Present: Leonardo Bufalini’s Plan of Rome is fascinating.

Please email Phil if you have trouble finding any of these papers.

Drafting 1502’s equivalent to a “satellite” map was a massive undertaking, and Leonardo managed to pull it off. His early map helped Italian politcian Cesare Borgia construct an idea of the town of Imola that was far more accurate than most contemporary maps. Through the use of careful measurements of angles and pacing out distances using a primitive odometer, Leonardo managed to create a map that was very close to accurate.

This map — an “ichnographic” map — was a step forward in portraying how maps could work to represent geography. Though it’s marked with some inaccuracies, it’s stunningly precise for the time and pushed forward the art of mapmaking. Leonardo’s Imola remains, even today, a remarkably useful guide to the city.

In Vox Almanac, Senior Producer Phil Edwards explains the world through history's footnotes.

[animewatch]

imagine your work is so good that people can't check its accuracy for hundreds of years.

[stanmakrushin]

02:55 People must have freaked out when they saw the Leonardo Street view vehicle

[soviet_from_afganussr]

He just fly above the city newton didnt discovered gravity yet

[carlitos]

It boggles my mind how ahead of his time this man was, he was extremely intelligent, imagine what he would come up with using the technology that we have now

[joermnyc]

DaVinci: “Tell no one my helicopter actually worked.”
DeMedici: “Done.”

[pondererofpointlessdreams]

Homeboy Leonardo bout to raise from the grave to sue Google for stealing the concept of Google Maps

[jamirimaj]

Da Vinci is so OP, that even his errors are being dubbed as "artistic license" and making some mistakes as "taking liberties" lol

[LabGecko]

The part that surprises me, as I'm already familiar with many of Da Vinci's work, is that _the buildings are in the same place after 300+ years!_

[SceneComparisons]

he is the greatest genius in the history of mankind

[Blazer-bnev]

He just asked Ezio to fly over the city multiple times and memorize the structure

[fairuzhussaini]

Legend has it that it was him who designed de_dust.

[markhird-rutter]

In the 1500’s there were many mappers doing work to high standards of accuracy. They used plane tables, stadia, early theodolites for angles. Check out the Noli map of Roam. Similar type of mapping. This was done on the ground and very carefully. The 3D render style shown at the beginning were originally collected in the same way and they had a machine that helped them convert to a perspective view.

[lebronjames]

Leonardo da Vinci was the hardest flexer of all time

[shenoynagu]

Engineers and scientists are lucky. If this dude was alive now.! He would have got all the noble every year.

[kyliegarcia]

Imagine what Leonardi could have accomplished with our present technology

[Jakentosh]

plot twist: the city was build after he made the map

[afrotron]

Da Vinci has always inspired me ever since I was a child. He's the reason I'm studying architecture.

[Curryfishballa]

Da Vinci the type of guy who is literally living in 2060

[subsnovids-eqyk]

When you make a character and you spend all your points on intellect.

[harpsichordman]

What is remarkable (among all else that is remarkable about Leonardo's work) is that at the time the maps was made, there were no universal standards - a foot in Florence was different in length from a foot in, say, Rome, which was different from a foot in Paris. So it is a testament to Leonardo's attention to accuracy and detail that the map can be overlaid on a modern map!