Norman cathedral holding the medieval Mappa Mundi.
Hereford’s sandstone cathedral, above the Wye, keeps two remarkable medieval survivals. The Mappa Mundi, drawn on a single sheet of vellum around 1300, is the largest medieval map of the world still in existence: less a route map than a picture of how thirteenth-century scholars saw creation, with Jerusalem at its centre. Next to it is the world’s largest surviving chained library, roughly 1,500 books still fastened to their shelves by chain. Entry to the cathedral is free; the Mappa Mundi and library museum charges. Hereford station is under a kilometre north-east.
