The first maps depicting the territory of Lithuania and Lithuania Minor were created by ancient geographers, from the second half of the 15th century – by Western European cartographers, in the 16th and 17th centuries – by Lithuanian and Prussian cartographers.
The exposition begins with a 2nd century map of Europe created by C. Ptolemy, printed in Rome in ~1508, which for the first time shows a view of the Baltic coastline, and a map of Central Europe by M. Waldseemüller, published in 1513, again in Rome. Next to them are examples of the works of 16th century Western European cartographers, such as S. Münster’s map of Central and Eastern Europe (compiled in 1570, published in Basel in 1628), H. Zell’s oldest map of Prussia (published in Antwerp in 1570), etc. Visitors also have an opportunity to see the old map of Prussia (published in Königsberg in 1584), the new map of Prussia (published in Antwerp in 1584) and the exact map of Prussia (published in Amsterdam in 1633), created by the most famous Prussian cartographer of the 16th century, C. Hennenberger.
Monuments of Lithuanian cartography are represented by W. Grodecki’s map of Poland and surrounding lands, published in Basel in 1574, and G. Mercator’s “Lithvania”, compiled in 1570 and printed in Duisburg in 1595. The exposition features the most famous example of Lithuanian cartography – the 1649 edition of the first original map of the GDL (The Grand Duchy of Lithuania) (compiled in 1613). The maps of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 18th century are represented by the works of M. Seutter (1728) and T. C. Lotter (1780).
In the exposition, visitors can get acquainted with maps depicting the Klaipėda region. Since the 17th century, in Prussia, cartography works have been done in a methodical way and maps depicting not only the whole country, but its individual parts as well, were published. The earliest work is a panorama of Klaipėda County with a view of Klaipėda painted by J. Narūnavičius-Naronskis in ~1670. M. Merian’s engraving The Great Prince-elector and His Army Pursuing Swedish Troops Across the Frozen Curonian Lagoon in 1679 (Frankfurt, 1687), in addition to the military scene, quite accurately depicts the eastern part of the Curonian Lagoon with its settlements. The changes in Lithuania Minor in the first half of the 18th century are shown by the map of Prussian Lithuania, compiled by Prussian engineer I. Fr. Betgen, published in Nuremberg in 1735, which shows the Salzburg colonies and the plan of the newly founded town of Gumbinnen.
The examples of topographic cartography of Klaipėda County from the Department of Military Topography of the Lithuanian Military (1938-1939), Geographical Institute of Weimar (1811-1813), and the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences (1763), provide knowledge about the development of the region. Later maps of Prussia (compiled by C. F. Weiland in c. 1864-1879), the German Empire (1899), the Baltic States and East Prussia (compiled by the Edinburgh Geographical Institute, in 1920) are also presented.