Upon its establishment, the Foundation acquired twenty-four printed maps of Cyprus, bequeathed by the Bank. Today the collection numbers more than 300 maps and the Foundation is already in possession of the majority of the known printed maps of Cyprus, including city plans and maritime charts.

The Foundation has gained international recognition for its contribution to the collection, preservation and public presentation of early maps and for the promotion of scholarly work on historical cartography and in 1990 received an award from the International Map Collectors’ Society (IMCoS).

The map collection of the Foundation was enriched by the donation of two major private collections: The Michaelides Map Collection was donated to the Foundation by the late Agnes Michaelides in 1988. Among the sixty-four items of the Michaelides collection are six different tabulae from various editions of Claudius Ptolemy’s Geography, the earliest dating back to 1525, as well as the first accurate sea-charts of Famagusta harbor, the work of Thomas Graves, published in the second half of the 19th century.

In 1993 Laura Georgiades decided to donate to the Cultural Foundation the map collection belonging to her late husband, Antonakis Georgiades, a collector and a founding member of the Cyprus Map Collectors’ Society. The collection comprises eighty-two items and includes a series of miniature maps of Cyprus originally published in pocket edition atlases of the 16th and 17th century.

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