Cartographers Have Been Hiding Covert Illustrations Inside of Switzerland's Maps

I love this kind of tongue-in-cheek steganography. In a similar vein: Vermont Inmates Hide Image Of Pig On Police Decals (https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/02/03/146358114...)

If you ever come to Switzerland download the swisstopo app. It is very detailed and useful for hiking but even in the city too, showing the locations of fountains, for example, rural and urban official and unofficial hiking trails, closed trails, slopes too steep to traverse, etc etc etc.

The Swiss topographical institute is a treasure.

The digital version over at https://map.geo.admin.ch/ has existed for many years but it is only a few years now that all Cantos have agreed to provide the data for free[1]. There is a lot of interesting data such as "Lärmbelastung" where you can lookup how loud car or rail traffic is at a location.

[1] https://www.geo.admin.ch/en/general-terms-of-use-fsdi

Seems like the hiker at the bottom of the article was introduced in 1997 and removed only in 2017: https://s.geo.admin.ch/be66brq5oby9

> illustrations hidden by the official cartographers at Swisstopo in defiance of their mandate “to reconstitute reality.”

This is such an odd idea.

Visual steganography.