Leiden University Libraries Digital Collections

Maps & Atlases

The University Library's overall collection of maps and atlases

COLLBN Port 2 N 60

Maps & Atlases

Maps and atlases have been collected from the founding of the University Library in 1587 onwards; the collection of maps and atlases now consists of approximately 100,000 map sheets (including c. 3,000 manuscript maps), 3,500 atlases and 25,000 topographical prints and drawings. The larger part was bequeathed in 1872 as a legacy of publisher Johannes Tiberius Bodel Nijenhuis (1797-1872). In addition to the Bodel Nijenhuis Collection, the collection of Maps and Atlases includes several other sub collections, such as the Van Keulen Collection, the Dutch colonial map collection of the former library of the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT), the map collection of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), and several other smaller sub collections. The maps are dating from the sixteenth century to the present-day. The emphasis lays on cartographic material of the Low Countries and western Europe and the regions of the Dutch East- and West-India companies (VOC and WIC) and the former Dutch colonies of present-day Indonesia, Surinam and the Netherlands Antilles. Accents and specialties are maps by Dutch mapmakers with special attention to cartographers from Leiden. In the collection a great number of town plans, fortification plans, charts on paper and vellum, school atlases and drafts, proof prints and used maps with annotations are kept.