France, Andorra & Corsica Map 1964 Atlas Print - Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Andorra la Vella, Ajaccio

The Polish Army Topography Service drew this map of France for the Pergamon World Atlas, the English edition of the Polish Atlas Świata, which Pergamon Press of Oxford issued together with the Polish Scientific Publishers of Warsaw. The sheet is dated 1964, although the atlas imprint reads 1968, and it was printed in Warsaw by Wojskowe Zakłady Kartograficzne on beige paper that gives the tinted colors a warm, even ground. The atlas was famous for its sheer scale, weighing nearly 5.5 kilograms and holding about 48 square meters of maps, and its France sheet at 1:2,500,000 measures a generous 55 by 40 centimeters, with relief shown in graded tints from green lowlands through browns to reds for the Alps and the Pyrenees. It is a political and physical map of France with four insets, drawn as the Fifth Republic under Charles de Gaulle settled into stability after the loss of Algeria.

Four insets extend the sheet beyond the main outline. Corsica appears at its own scale, showing the mountainous terrain of the island, while Andorra, the Pyrenean co-principality governed jointly by the French head of state and the Spanish bishop of Urgell, receives a separate map. The Massif Central, the old volcanic and crystalline upland at the middle of the country, is drawn to emphasize its rugged ground, and Lyon, the regional hub where the Rhône meets the Saône, is shown with its transport network. On the main sheet the major cities, rivers, roads and boundaries are marked, with the Alps and the Pyrenees standing out in darker tints along the frontiers. The map reflects a country rebuilding its roads, railways and cities in the postwar boom.

A hiker who has crossed the Pyrenees into Andorra, a family from Lyon or the Massif Central, or a geography teacher who loves the physical landscape will find a thoughtful gift here, perhaps for a retirement or a house move. Among TheMapVault's other France sheets, the maps by Teesdale, Morse, Mitchell and Cram are nineteenth-century engravings with hachured hills, while this is the only postwar map, printed in graded color tints for a modern atlas. It is also the only one in the group with Andorra, Lyon and the Massif Central as insets. Like every print in the collection, it ships unframed and is available in a full range of sizes, from a compact desk piece to a large-format statement print.