Map of the Month: Aletschgletscher (Aletsch Glacier), Topographical Survey of Switzerland, 1964

Update December 10, 2025: many thanks to an attentive reader who noted we initially used the wrong image at the bottom of the blog post. It has now been corrected.

As we bundle ourselves up here in Toronto, let's take a moment to appreciate the wintry beauty of glaciers and snow-capped peaks, captured below in gorgeous mid-century Swiss topographic maps.

We are fortunate to have a complete 1964 set of maps of Aletsch Glacier (German: Aletschgletscher), in the Swiss Alps. Although they are scientific works, they are also works of art:

Consider the painterly quality of the soft hillshading; appreciate how the smooth cyan glaciers contrast with the warm greys of the rough Alpine rockface.

These maps resemble the style of Eduard Imhof (1895-1986), a professor of cartography, who—although not the cartographer of the above maps—created many other maps of mountains and glaciers, including one in our collection. His distinctive cartographic style, which he began developing in the 1920s and 1930s, was incredibly influential in Switzerland and internationally by the time the above maps were published. Among other accomplishments, he taught at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and headed the Swiss National Atlas (Walliser und Berner Alpen, Atlas der Schweiz, 1965), shown below.

If you are a fan of this style and use GIS, you may be excited to learn that John Nelson (Esri, Inc.) created an ArcGIS Pro style based on Imhof's work. Nelson offers a tutorial on creating Imhof-like maps and a downloadable ArcGIS Pro style based on Imhof's work.

Example of John Nelson's cartography, specifically San Marino, using an Imhof-like style. Courtesy of Esri, Inc.