The Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics at Eötvös Loránd University has recently started a project to save the cartographic heritage of globe making first of all for the interest of professionals, students of cartography and geography in Hungary and abroad. In the first stage, those earth and celestial globes are processed digitally by the staff and students of cartography that have some relationship to Hungary. These digital products are continuously placed in the Virtual Globes Museum run by the Department. The collection of this museum is accessible through the Internet. The methods developed for the virtual museum offer new ways of the virtual restoration of damaged globes without any risk, the reconstruction of virtual facsimile globes, and the recreation of virtual contemporary facsimile globes. This paper discusses some of the technical advantages of three dimensional virtual globes. The 3D products offer great opportunities to examine the map content in detail. They can be easily handled by a mouse and can be used as demonstration aids in the classroom too. These “new” copies may be most useful for the physical restoration of the existing originals, which are often unique and carefully kept globes. For this purpose, it is most convenient if the map prints of the globes are still available, because they preserved the original state of the product (such as geographical names or colours) much better than the globes that may have been put to damage and light for centuries. An intermediate stage of the digital processing of an outstanding large globe made in Hungary in 1862 is described to show the challenges that cartographers may meet when working with old globes to prepare their virtual copies. The paper introduces the reader to some of the interesting globes that have already been placed in the Virtual Globes Museum (for instance, the detachable earth globe, the globes of Bleau, Kogutowicz). A 2 passage tells the reader method the globes are described along with the images of the globes. The ...