Pieter van der Aa was a Dutch publisher specialising in atlases, maps and luxuriously illustrated volumes aimed at the general public. His monumental 66-volume Galerie Agréable du Monde, is a collection of around 3,000 plates showing panoramic views of cities, maps, scenes of everyday life and depictions of religious customs, illustrating various locations around the world as they were known to Europeans in the early eighteenth century.
The set in the Royal Library has been bound into 25 volumes. This volume contains illustrations of Ottoman territories in Asia, Persia (now Iran) and the Mughal Empire in India.