Visualising Ancient Maps as Cultural Heritage: A Relational Database of the Spanish Ancient Cartography

The analysis of the historical evolution of the territories and landscapes has been seldom based upon the study of old cartographic documents; they have been always set in a second place after texts and writings. Trying to bridge this gap, we have designed and implemented a relational database of the ancient maps and charts that are already preserved in the main Spanish collections, archives and libraries, that includes the possibility to access to a a high resolution digital image of each one of them. The personalized queries to the database will allow the scholars and searchers to visualise the document together with its main features.