When the Venetian cartographer-monk Fra Mauro sets out to create the definitive map of the world, he has no idea that the project will become the adventure of a lifetime, challenging most of his familiar concepts about the world. As he receives travellers from far away into his cell and listens to their descriptions of the strange and fantastic places they've seen, Fra Mauro comes to see that the world consists of much more than continents and kingdoms, that it is also made up of a vast, equally real, interior landscape of beliefs, aspirations, and dreams. As he struggles to reconcile conflicting views of reality his map begins to take on extraordinary dimensions, raising unforeseen questions and pushing the boundaries of his previous conception.