Preparation for the printed edition of Claudius Ptolemy’s ‘Geographia’ in Rome is believed to have begun in 1473 or 1474. In Bologna the previous year 1477 the first edition of the ‘Geographia’ came off the press but the quality of the Rome edition is far superior. Two German printers were behind this issue: Conrad Sweynheym and his successor Arnold Buckninck. It was published by Domitius Calderinus. “Many consider the Rome plates to be the finest Ptolemaic plates produced until Gerard Mercator engraved his classical world atlas of 1578” (Shirley). There is more detail depicted on the map than the Bologna edition. Degrees of latitude and longitude are recorded in the margins. There were two later issues of the map in 1490 and 1507. This is an example from the first 1478 edition. Shirley records only 39 examples of the atlas were reported in 1952. Shirley 4; Campbell p.131; Dalché (2007) ‘The Reception of Ptolemy’s Geography (End of the Fourteenth to Beginning of the Sixteenth Century’ in ‘The History of Cartography’ volume 3 part 1 pp. 285-364; Suarez ‘Shedding the Veil’ pp. 20-23.