PR Website

Medieval Itineraries: List

Each place listed in the itineraries is linked to its geographical coordinates. I originally plotted these in a series of Google Earth files (kml), but have now moved this to Google Spreadsheets. The main spreadsheet has one sheet per itinerary, where the original text is related to its modern placename and latitude/longitude. This gives a good overview of an itinerary. I've not been able to identify some places; please let me know if you can help on any of these.

Once you have the coordinates, you can plot them on a map. I have done this in two different ways

  1. mark each place listed on the map; there is no problem with scaling here, you can zoom in as much as you like, so I use standard slippy (relief) maps for these; interactive, but can be slow to load
  2. draw an overview route map by linking the places with straight lines; these do not scale, as the closer you look, the less the extrapolated lines will resemble the detailed road on the map. I've created these using Mapserver: they are just images with no interaction but are fast to display. The routes vary considerably in the amount of detail given, so each map shows both the points and the extrapolated lines; clearly, the farther the points are apart the less accurate the line is likely to be. Note that the maps are simple planar projections of geographic coordinates (i.e. 1° of latitude is the same length as 1° of longitude); they are therefore distortions

So, each itinerary in the list below has a link to a details page with an overview route map (where the traveller made more than one journey, I've created one map for each), more information on the itinerary, what is known about its background, and where the source can be viewed online. There is also a link to the appropriate spreadsheet page, and also to another page on this site with the placemarks on an interactive map. As displaying all placemarks for an itinerary at once can take a long time and often makes little sense, the itinerary is split into sections, so you can click on as many as you please. Of course, the more placemarks there are, the longer it will take to display.

I've divided the itineraries into three categories:

There is a fourth category, journeys which are not really pilgrimages or inventories, but do document the roads used. For example, the journey to/from the Crusades of Richard the Lionheart and Philippe-Auguste, or the lengthy journey in 1465-7 of Leo of Rosmithal/Rozmital. I have not got around to these yet, but have a rudimentary list on the 'Others' page.

Diaries
Guides
Inventories
Others
March 2008, revised September 2008