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Shakespeare & Beyond

Up Close: A 1574 map of London

This hand-colored map of London and its surroundings was created in 1574 by Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg. It shows us something of the London in which William Shakespeare lived and worked, such as Blackfriars, where Shakespeare bought a townhouse as an investment and where his plays were performed at an indoor theater.

Get an up-close look at the map and learn more about it by clicking through the arrows to see captions that zoom in on different parts of the image. Click the eye icon to hide or display the text.

Much of the information about the places depicted in this map is drawn from the 2012 Folger exhibition Open City: London, 1500–1700, curated by Kathleen Lynch with Betsy Walsh as consultant.