maps-geo
OldMapsOnline
A portal for discovering georeferenced historical maps held by institutions around the world, pointing you to the collection that holds each map. It offers a geographic (bounding-box) search API and IIIF endpoints, but we surface it as a link to its own search form. Currently flagged as degraded: the site may present a CAPTCHA before letting you in.
No programmatic check, opens the archive’s own search.
Why it’s useful & how it works
OldMapsOnline is built for place-based historical map discovery: instead of searching by keyword, you draw or describe a geographic area and it surfaces maps of that location held by institutions worldwide, often spanning centuries of cartographic history for a single place. Each result links to the holding library or archive where you can view or download the map. Echo links you to its search interface, though the site may sometimes require a verification step before it loads.
What’s inside
Over 500,000 high-resolution historical maps indexed from institutions around the world, including major national libraries and university map collections, covering locations globally from the early modern period onward.
API access
geo-search API by bbox; IIIF
What we measured
Our own probes, not the archive’s own claims. Re-run periodically; every reading below is dated.
Reachability
- Direct request
- Cloudflare challenge HTTP 403 157 ms (just a moment)
- Through a datacenter proxy
- Cloudflare challenge HTTP 403 562 ms (just a moment)
Reachability measured 2026-08-22.
Access
May require solving a captcha before it responds.