Paris Grand Palais Coronelli

Paris Grand Palais Coronelli
Originally uploaded by robindesbois32000

In 1683, King Louis XIV was given a gift of two globes, one a terrestrial globe and the other a celestial globe, both specially manufactured by the monk cartographer Vincenzo Coronelli. Each measuring 4 meters in diameter, the globes represent the knowledge of that era in terrestrial geography and astronomy. Designed to pivot on themselves, they are, because of their weight and size, a technical feat unprecedented at the time. The terrestrial and celestial spheres had been shown publicly only once since the beginning of the twentieth century. They now make their home at the François Mitterand Library in the southeast corner of Paris. After we returned from Giverny, we took a metro to the library and viewed them. They are immense and really gorgeous. It was interesting to see the discrepancy between what was believed about the new world at the time and what we know as fact today – for example, California is shown as an island, there is a huge square lake in upper South America which does not exist, the Hudson Bay is shown much larger and much closer to the Great Lakes than it actually is, the Gulf of Mexico is exaggeratedly large, New Zealand was shown as part of Antarctica, Florida is shown much shorter than what it is, and the Mississippi River is shown much farther west than it actually is (this might explain why LaSalle ended up at Matagorda Bay in Texas while looking for the mouth of the Mississippi River).