Revealing the city in maps: Bath seen, built, and imagined

Putting Bath on the Map is an exhibition of maps of the City of Bath displayed in the Building of Bath Collection. The maps are considered in the context of the permanent collection of the museum which examines how buildings were constructed in the eighteenth-century city. The exhibition reviews how buildings moved from conception, as shown on maps and in architectural texts, through legal, financial, and material processes to take their place in the landscape. This essay considers the display of particular maps, such as Joseph Gilmore's (1694), and John Wood's (1735), and the recent city initiative to improve its signage maps to help visitors and citizens build mental maps of the historic city.