This Crazy-Detailed London Map Took 10 Years to Draw

Stand in awe of this map of London, but don’t try to navigate with it. The pen-and-ink masterwork is so loaded with landmarks, vehicles, creatures, puns, local references, and cryptic symbols you’d need almost as much time as the artist spent making it—a decade—just to take it all in.

“London Town” is the most ambitious project to date from Gareth Wood, the crazed cartographer also known as Fuller. It’s a tripling-down of his previous treatment of Bristol, which took a mere three years to draw, and the effort shines through in every square inch. Populating the hectic city are Jack the Ripper, bicycle superhighways, flocks of grungy pigeons and surveillance cameras, a hobbyist’s quadcopter, that floating pig from the Pink Floyd album cover, and possibly the artist himself, represented as a pair of knobby knees to the west of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.