The map is one of those human inventions that could be described as 'magical'. It brings before us the vastness of the earth. Something that is otherwise impossible to see and perceive, the immense, by human standards, expanse of land becomes accessible, familiar, and the map turns into a tangible tool for work and knowledge, escape, and dream.

It is not by chance that the map, apart from its practical significance and importance, has been a particular subject in Poetry and History. The map is a 'language', whose auditory part becomes visual, while its graphical part remains graphical. Just like language, the map has its codes, its writing and grammar, rules and exceptions, punctuation, and symbols, coloring, and musicality, aesthetics, and style.

The long journey of maps is inextricably linked to History and presents exceptional interest because, aside from their practical role in documenting and transferring knowledge, they have also been objects of culture, art, and aesthetic expression. The map has always oscillated between science (once philosophy) and art.

Even when, from the 19th century onward, it took on an increasingly technological dimension, form, and content, it never ceased, as a visual 'object', to be evaluated based on its aesthetics, according to the modern understanding of the term. This is because a visually appealing map communicates more effectively with its audience and users.

In our time, the 'culture' of maps and cartography is not only understood in its technological applications but also for its applications in the broader social, political, administrative, educational, cultural, and communicative system of a country.

The role, position, and importance of this 'culture' in a society depend on the degree to which that specific society has lived through and applied the developments that mainly occurred in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries (not to mention starting from the 14th century as many European societies did) in ideas, sciences, technology, literature, and the arts.

Especially noteworthy is the influence that three significant events of the 15th century had on Western European societies, such as their acquaintance with the (brought from Byzantium) Ptolemaic 'Geography' after fifteen centuries of 'absence', the Great Geographic Discoveries, and Printing.

A book that attempts a 'first approach', almost introductory, to the History of Cartography and Maps might seem like a repetition in other countries where cartography and maps have created an exceptional infrastructure and tradition over the last six centuries and are today a self-evident and widely disseminated social and private 'good' in the collective consciousness of those countries.

However, I believe that, for our country, it still represents (even 10 years after its initial writing) a necessary 'starting' endeavor in the effort for domestic dissemination of cartography and maps as here, unfortunately, they have not constituted, nor do they currently constitute, objects of collective culture, consciousness, and memory.

The main reasons for this, at first glance, are implicitly obvious and are connected to historical reasons. However, they could also be the subject of particular interest and specialized study and interpretation, especially for the period after the establishment of the new Greek state and until (at least) the mid-1970s of the 20th century.