The collection comprises more than five hundred objects and covers a period of time from the 17th to the 20th century.

With respect to territory and cartographic school as well as time of origin, the collection can be divided into several sub-collections.

It contains maps of the Dubrovnik Republic, of the Adriatic and Mediterranean, partial representations of individual seas and islands in the Mediterranean, maps of the Pacific and the Atlantic, of South America, east Asia and other parts of the world and also old editions of atlases, of which the atlases Atlante Veneto of 1696 of Vincenzo Coronelli and the Portulan Atlas of 1649 of the well-known Italian cartographer Placido Calorio e Oliva of Messina are particularly interesting.

With respect to cartographic schools, the collection keeps charts and maps of French and Italian cartographers of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, and Flemish, Austrian and English cartographers of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The oldest objects derive from the second half of the 17th century. These are maps of the Venetian cartographer V. Coronelli and the French mapmaker G. Sanson.

The collection holds nautical charts of the Adriatic Sea and the eastern Adriatic coast from the 19th to the 20th century, constructed by the Austro-Hungarian Imperial and Royal Navy, the Navy of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the Genoese Naval Hydrographic Institute, the Military Geography Institute of Belgrade and the Hydrographic Institute of the Yugoslav Navy in Split, and these constitute the major part of the collection.

Only a smaller part of the collection is on show in the permanent display. Among the exhibits, particular attention is drawn by maps of the Dubrovnik Republic and the Adriatic coast of the European cartographers V. Coronelli and G. Sanson.