File:Domenico Zenoi, Map of the Maltese islands.jpg

English: Domenico Zenoi’s Map of the Maltese islands, showing a scene from the Great Siege of 1565 when the Turkish fleet gathered off Marsaxlokk, seizes and holds our attention for all the interesting details it offers. The inverted positions of Comino and Cominotto and the Temple of Juno found on the island of Filfla are some of the inaccuracies characterising this map. Apart from the geographical and topographical information, correct or otherwise, and the Great Siege bulletin yielded from this 16th-century map produced in Venice, there is also, believe it or not, a supernatural world to discover. This is manifested by the marine realm where three sea creatures rear their grotesque heads in the Mediterranean Sea. One monster spouts water from its elephantine trunk, the other bears a whimsical resemblance to a whale and a horned-and-winged creature makes up the third. Cartographers indulged in such fantastical aquatic animals when they decorated the vast seas and oceans appearing in Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance maps intended mainly for high social class collectors. Derived from Classical writings, and whose descriptions evolved over time, these sea beasts imaginatively equipped with atypical bodily features, enchanted, marvelled and symbolised the real dangers of navigation especially in unventured territories.