Géo212 reports that Coronelli’s globes are on display in Paris for the first time in 25 years, as part of the reopening of the Grand Palais. See coverage from the Nouvel Observateur and Radio France Internationale; if you don’t read French, try, oddly enough, South Africa’s Mail and Guardian. Thierry Rousselin writes, “After this short exhibit they will be transfered to the National Library and after a few months of restoration they should be permanently exhibited before the end of 2006.”

This is as good an excuse as any to familiarize ourselves with the work of Vincenzo Coronelli, the cartographer and globemaker who in the 1680s was commissioned by Louis XIV to create two globes — one celestial, one terrestrial — each nearly four metres in diameter. These globes, the Marly Globes, are what went on display at the Grand Palais. After that commission, he went on to produce smaller, printed reproductions of the Marly Globes; this site sells facsimiles. (The Vienna-based International Coronelli Society for the Study of Globes is named after him.)