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I'm a map junkie; I grew up in the UK, where we have the Ordnance Survey, who makes some of the best maps in the world. At school we actually got lessons in mapreading and analysis.

As a result, whenever I go to another country the first thing I do is to try and find some decent maps of the area. With, you know, contours on them. It can be surprisingly hard.

I was so, so glad to find this.



You may also enjoy the U.S. equivalent to the Ordnance Survey, the USGS. https://www.usgs.gov/


A cool link that's pretty hidden on the USGS site is Earth Explorer:

http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/

It's an agglomeration of most maps that are available -- you can pick the area, and then see a giant list of the types of maps that cover those coordinates. From topo maps to high resolution aerial photographs, to solar irradiance, to rainfall -- all types of interesting materials.


Interested in maps from Switzerland? They are of very high quality as well:

http://map.geo.admin.ch/

There are a lot of different overlays as well as older versions available. I especially recommend the 'Dufour Map' and the 'Siegfried Map' from the 19th century, the earliest official maps of the country.


Similarly, the French government has some great maps up: http://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/accueil

It's in French, unfortunately for the Anglophone world, but they also have aerial maps dating back to the 30s under the advanced explorer.


Wow, thanks! I've been using the SwissMobility maps, which is mostly using the same data, but this is way more slick (and faster). Check out the embedding options! That's really cool.

Now, if only they had a mobile app...


FYI Bing maps has the UK OS maps down to 1:25,000 - which is awesome!


Bing's geoblocked! You don't get the OS goodness unless you're inside the UK...

streetmap.co.uk works everywhere, though, if you can stand the old-school interface:

http://streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?x=171500&y=844500&z=120


I rather like the czech touristic maps

https://mapy.cz/turisticka?x=14.1802678&y=49.9386049&z=14&so...

They have coverage of the whole Europe and an app with offline maps. They also have other map layers - Summer/Winter tourism, roadmap, physical, 19th century and one that can be printed for blind people.




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