(Thanks to Cece Chapman for this link.)
Completed in 1459, the Mappa Mundi is the compendium of all the geographical knowledge of the time and is arguably the greatest medieval map of the world.
Here, the BBC issues a series of charming superlatives in order for us to grasp the splendor of this map. It is, indeed, beautiful.
In spite of its sense of detail and its overall rigor, the BBC presentation does find a bit of fun in exploring the map and its history, but somehow, in spite of the fun, we wind up with this map becoming an instrument for rationalism and at that, an imperial rationalism, which seems a bit overdone.
Yet the charm of this map is the kind of charm one experiences at an amusement park when one finds the map that says "You Are Here." This kind of map is an experience map, a map that also says "Here is everything available to you in this world."
The Divine Comedy is also just such an experience map. Experience, after all, has a location.
What we might say is that our maps of the world usually tend to render experience asemic, but that these maps engage the experiential.
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