Who doesn’t like a good old fashioned treasure map with a classic ‘x marks the spot’ showing where the treasure is buried? National Archives in the Netherlands has released documents including a map that allegedly shows the location of a haul of stolen treasures looted by Nazi troops, and buried in April 1945, near Ommeren writes The Guardian.
The haul would be worth 15 million GBP at 2023 prices but there’s no knowing whether the treasure remains buried or whether it was recovered/moved many years ago. The real treasure is the map itself. It’s a delightful hand drawn map which has pretty much all you’d need to know to locate the buried treasure. It clearly shows the local roads and towns but the two insets are really quite special. In the lower right, a large scale oblique diagram shows the three trees one would need to find, with the tree canopy breaking the inset’s neatline! And in the bottom left there’s even an aspect view to give an impression of the topography and depth at which the treasure might be buried. To top it off, even the route to the treasure is shown in a contrasting red dashed line and ‘x’
Of course, now the map has been made public the town had been besieged by treasure hunters but to date the treasure, or solid evidence of its location, has yet to be found.
My only quibble with the design is the person who made the map, presumably a Nazi soldier, failed to use a Swastika as the symbol for the location. It was a gift! But they chose to go with the classic X instead.