The display depicts the history of the science from Babylonian tablets in the 6th century BC until the Space Shuttle.

Globes showing the constellations are a reminder of the days when conventional wisdom assumed the earth was at the centre of creation while the same principle applied to countries and civilisations.

Before London's Greenwich Meridian became the standard zero longitude the centre of the world depended on the geo-cultural perspective of the mapmaker.

Early Korean maps depict that country as the centre of the world with China an 'In-between Kingdom' and the rest of the world fringe territories.

During the Crusades, maps in Christendom showed Jerusalem as the epicentre while during the Roman empire all roads led to Rome.

European maps in the Middle Ages reflected the three cornerstones of western civilisation -- Greek science, Roman administration and the Christian faith.

The Chinese contribution and the advanced science of Islamic civilisation in the Middle Ages took the subject forward, chart-making instruments from the Museum of Tehran being one of the exhibition highlights.

Many cartographers long assumed there were three continents -- Europe, Asia and Africa -- but the discovery of new worlds saw mapmakers dispatched quickly by aspiring colonial powers.

In 1696 Frenchman Guillaume Delisle produced a map of North America with a large gap in the west although he had established the presence of waterways towards the Pacific coast.

By concealing their existence France hoped to beat other powers but in 1700 another French cartographer, Jean-Baptiste Nolin, revealed all. Delisle sued for plagiarism.

Leaders and footsoldiers had different needs. Kings pored over maps of entire continents but the sailors dispatched to colonise them ignored the big picture, preferring local coastline charts.

With Oceania there was no proof of its existence to the outside world until its discovery, although many believed a great landmass existed in that region. Many maps before the discovery show a huge randomly-shaped landmass.

It was only between 1798-1803 that an accurate map of Australia was produced, the work of Matthew Flinders, commissioned to circumnavigate 'Terra Australis' in HMS Investigator and map it.

As late as the 19th century, gaps remained. Author Joseph Conrad wrote in 1902: "When I was young I had a great passion for geographical maps. In those days there were still many empty spaces and it seemed particularly important to discover them."

The advent of the space age took the science to a new level. Supposed details in the Amazon and Sahara were shown to be mere figments of the cartographers' imaginations and deleted from atlases.

American space pioneer John Glenn said as he blasted off from Cape Canaveral: "I can see all of Florida as if it was a map."

Space also held the key to the past. Electromagnetic pulses allow satellites to plot the ancient course of the Nile river.

Not all agree that knowledge is a good thing.

At the turn of the 20th Century, Italian Riccardo Bacchetti warned: "We Europeans know too much of the World. (Christopher) Columbus did not know the harm he was doing."

The exhibition -- 'Signs and Dreams of the World' -- opened at Milan's Palazzo Reale on September 27 and runs until January 6, 2002.

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