Spain & Portugal Map 1893 World's Fair Atlas Print - Madrid, Lisbon, Barcelona, Seville, Porto

George Cram of Chicago published this Spain and Portugal in The Columbian World's Fair Atlas, an uncommon atlas of ninety maps issued in 1893 to commemorate the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and produced for Wood Brothers Cash Store of Unadilla, New York. The map measures 31 by 24 centimeters at a scale of 1:4,300,000, in outline color by country, and shows cities and towns, with relief in hachures and with both Greenwich and Washington as prime meridians. It gives population and area in square miles. The catalog description names Madrid, Lisbon, Barcelona and Seville, the Bay of Biscay, the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The atlas itself is hardbound in brown cloth with an embossed gilt title on the front, and it was made as a keepsake of the fair as much as a work of reference.

The Exposition of 1893 celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus's first voyage, which had sailed in 1492 under the Spanish crown, so a map of Spain and Portugal fitted naturally in an atlas published for the occasion. Spain sent replicas of Columbus's three ships across the Atlantic to the fair. Portugal, whose navigators had opened the sea routes to India and Brazil, belonged to the same age of discovery. The atlas also carries city plans, engravings of the Exposition's buildings, and several pages of amusing advertisements, which make it as much a souvenir of Chicago as a reference book.

A collector of World's Fair memorabilia, a reader of Columbus history, or a family with roots in Spain or Portugal will find a memorable gift here. TheMapVault's Mitchell sheet of 1890 shows the peninsula with railroads at the larger scale of 1:3,200,000, whereas this Cram sheet of 1893 is the small souvenir version from an atlas made for the Chicago fair, drawn in outline color by country. 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.