This map, created by the French artist Daniel Derveaux in 1973, depicts the Way of St James in a style reminiscent of 17th- and 18th-century cartographers such as Johann Homann and Joan Blaeu.

The map shows France and northern Spain with lines marking the various pilgrimage routes of the Camino de Santiago from traditional starting points such as Paris, Vézelay, Arles and Le Puy. The main routes are marked with a solid line, whilst dotted lines are used to indicate secondary routes. The map is accompanied by its own iconography, such as coats of arms and vignettes of pilgrims at the bottom.

Given the map’s appearance and the date of 1648 in the top left-hand corner, Derveaux sought to give the map an air of antiquity, but specialist analyses of the history of the Way of St James indicate that the routes chosen by Derveaux do not correspond exactly to the network of routes documented in the 17th century.

The popularity of this map since the 1970s has become so deeply ingrained in the history of the Camino de Santiago that it has become one of the route’s most recognisable visual landmarks, despite the inaccuracies in its route. The reality in the 17th century was that very few of these routes were fixed, and the secondary ones were probably not even used consistently.

Sources

• 1973 Daniel Derveaux Map of the Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela: France, Spain
• Postcard of Santiago de Compostela