No, the Earth is not flat. Since the fifteenth century at the latest, there have been globes reflecting the historical state of knowledge about geography and astronomy as well as the cultural ideas of the respective epoch. Most of these historical globes are gathering dust in museum stockrooms. Now a cooperative venture between the Fraunhofer Institute and the University of Jena is making them available in virtual form. With an innovative 3D scanner, which reproduces both the form and the colouring, perfect digital images of these world models are created which soon will be available to the public on the Internet. With this process, a procedure is being developed that in the future could transport not only globes, but also all kinds of other cultural treasures into the digital realm.