Twelve rare Russian maps from the Special Collections are exhibited in the colonnade area. The
earliest map, published in 1595, is the work of a famous Flemish cartographer, mathematician, and
geographer Gerhard Mercator, who invented the projection that bears his name and coined the word
“atlas” to refer to a book of maps. The latest among the exhibited maps is the map of The Whole
Russian Empire published by Robert Sayer on March 2, 1772. It was reproduced from the earlier
original crafted by Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville (1697 –1782), perhaps the greatest
French cartographer and geographical author of the eighteenth century.