"There are few countries in the world in which surveying and mapping played so much important role in its history. Palestine, the Holy Land, was long coveted by foreigners, primarily the Crusades and European colonists. They wanted to know its physical and historical characteristics as a prelude to conquering the land."

– Salman H. Abu-Sitta, Atlas of Palestine 1917–1966.

The maps and atlases produced by Dr. Salman Abu Sitta bring together more than six decades of work to reconstruct the geography of Palestine in the face of systematic attempts to erase it. Drawing on historical surveys, archival records, personal testimonies, and extensive research, they restore thousands of villages, landmarks, and place names to the map, while documenting the shifting boundaries, land seizures, and forced displacement that have marked the ongoing settler-colonisation of Palestine.

Through a selection of these maps, the exhibition offers glimpses into the long journey behind their making, where Abu Sitta’s personal search for traces of his birthplace meets the wider geography of Palestinian life and dispossession, extending to his maps and plans for the return of Palestinian refugees, where the work of reconstructing Palestine’s geography becomes the work of charting the way home.