Map websites have a way of eating an evening: you look up one place and an hour later you're tracing borders from another century. Each map here was picked by an editor, opened and checked live, and given a short review.
OpenHistoricalMap adds a time slider to a world map, showing borders, railways and streets for any year, drawn by volunteers the OpenStreetMap way. OldNYC covers New York in dots, each opening historical photos of that exact spot from the New York Public Library. Native Land maps Indigenous territories, languages and treaties worldwide: type in your town and see whose land it is. The Ancient Earth globe lets you watch continents drift across 750 million years, and Itiner-e lets you plot a route along Roman roads like an ancient traveler.
These interactive maps go beyond geography, too: Musicmap charts pop music as a family tree, and CostTrek compares the cost of living across cities. New finds are added regularly, so there is always another map to get lost in.
5 finds
Site of the dayRed Blob Games explains algorithms through game examples — A* pathfinding, hex grids, map generation from noise — with interactive diagrams you can drag and tweak.
Site of the dayMusicmap lays out popular music as one giant chart — from blues and gospel to techno and emo — on a timeline from the 1880s to the 2020s, showing what grew out of what.
Site of the dayThe most detailed open atlas of Roman roads: an interactive map of the whole empire where you can plot a route like an ancient traveler. A research project that's free to explore.
Site of the dayA 3D globe of Earth across 750 million years. Pick an era to see the continents drift, or type in your town to see where it sat in the age of dinosaurs.
Site of the dayA huge online collection of historical maps, atlases and globes — over 150,000 images you can explore in high resolution.