The printed plate
Italy lifted out, Alps and all.
Europe
Forty-five countries at real elevation
▶ Play it onlineEurope is the classic first political puzzle, and printing it in relief changes what it teaches. The Alps run across four pieces at once. Italy's Apennine spine and Norway's fjord coast are things you feel before you read them. And the flat middle — the North European Plain, where borders have moved most in the last three centuries — is visibly the part of the map with nothing in the way.
What a child works out
- Which borders follow mountains and rivers, and which do not.
- Country shapes are memorable when you have handled them.
- The flattest part of Europe is the part whose map has changed most.
A download, to print yourself
- A .3mf file with the colours already assigned
- One STL per piece, for any other slicer
- A print guide with the settings and the order to print in
- For your own use; the licence is in the download
What you need to print it
- A build plate that takes 176 × 250 mm: the Bambu Lab A1, P1S and X1C (256 mm) do, the A1 mini (180 mm) does not
- A multicolour setup such as an AMS, for the colours as designed
Printed it? Got an idea?
Send me photos of your print and I'll add them to this page — or tell me what you'd add, leave out or change on Europe.
The plate
- Pieces
- 29 pieces
- Plate
- 176 × 250 mm
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 24.7 km
- Vertical exaggeration
- × 20.64
- Thickness
- 8.8 mm
- Smallest piece
- 104 mm²
- Fit
- 0.35 mm clearance
- Material
- PLA, printed in Switzerland
B5 — the size of a school exercise book.
How much ground one millimetre of plate covers.
Height is stretched by this factor so the relief is readable at desk size.
Nothing is cut smaller than a child can pick up.
Printed in place, so every piece seats first time without sanding.
Every named piece
- Austria
- Belarus
- Belgium
- Bulgaria
- Croatia
- Czech Republic
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Greece
- Hungary
- Iceland
- Ireland
- Italy
- Latvia
- Lithuania
- Macedonia
- Moldova
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Poland
- Portugal
- Romania
- Serbia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Ukraine
- United Kingdom
Zoom in, zoom out
A piece of each of these is the subject of the next one. Each plate is redrawn at its own scale, so it is a real map at every level rather than an enlargement of the one above.
Follow the borders — World to continent to country to canton to city district
More from Countries & States
See all →
The United States
The lower forty-eight, and two pieces you would not expect
Fifty pieces. The straight western borders and the crooked eastern ones, over the ground that explains both.
- Pieces
- 46 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 20.1 km
- Suitable for
- Ages 6 and up
- Price
- CHF 15.00
North America
Nineteen countries, Panama to the Arctic
The continent as countries — including the Caribbean islands that are usually too small to cut.
- Pieces
- 6 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 49.3 km
- Suitable for
- Ages 6 and up
- Price
- CHF 15.00
Switzerland
Twenty-three cantons over the Alps
The cantons, printed at 1 mm to 1.5 km, with the Alps in white and every major lake in blue.
- Pieces
- 23 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 1.5 km
- Suitable for
- Ages 6 and up
- Price
- CHF 15.00