Abstract In the Galleria delle Carte Geografiche in the Vatican Palace (1581) regional maps of Italy are combined with scenes of episodes from church history. A number of cartographic questions are posed concerning authorship, execution and sources, and another set of issues is raised concerning the purpose and relevance of the murals in sixteenth‐century religious debates. In this paper, the map murals are examined in the context of Renaissance surveying practice through a new scrutinity of archival evidence on the Gallery's planner and supervisor, the Dominican Ignazio Danti. The murals are then considered in the context of post‐Tridentine religious debate and explained as an attempt to accommodate Protestant use of cartography to the advantage of the Catholic Church.