Baedeker, Karl / Wagner & Debes

We offer a wide selection of original maps from the renowned Baedeker travel guides, including town and city plans, topographical maps, and touring maps covering Europe, North America, the Mediterranean, and parts of the Middle East and North Africa. Founded by Karl Baedeker in 1827, these guidebooks revolutionised travel publishing—evolving from the aristocratic travelogues of the European Grand Tour into practical, authoritative handbooks for the growing tourist class. Central to their success were the high-quality maps and dramatic Alpine panoramas produced by Leipzig-based cartographers Eduard Wagner and Ernst Debes. As Herbert Warren Wind observed, Baedeker’s guides featured “the best maps in the world,” keeping them far ahead of their rivals. Often described as the Lonely Planet of their era, Baedeker’s guides were translated into multiple languages and issued in numerous editions.