Facsimile

• Images from the Alphonso MS -- Organized by Charles Knutson of MacGregor Historic Games, this site collects (admittedly somewhat low-res) images of much of Alphonso X's Book of Games. (more)
• MS page showing Nine Men's Morris -- The illustration is in the lower border. It is shows two people playing Merels. (more)
• Facsimile images of Jacobus de Cessolis' MS -- A Latin text that uses Chess as a metaphor for the various roles of human life. Later translated into English and published by Caxton: Chess -- Caxton's "The Game and Playe of the Chesse" (1476) (more)
• Images of many board games (heavy on Goose) -- A substantial number of game boards, many (but not all) period and many (but not all) of them Goose variations (more)
• Chess Problems in the NYPL -- Half a dozen scanned pages in Latin from the New York Public Library's collection, showing chess problems, apparently from 15th c. Italy. (more)
• Mühle (‘Nine Men’s Morris’) -- A board for a game of Mühle (‘Nine Men’s Morris’) is carved into the inside front cover of a 12th c German Psalter. (more)
• On the Explanation of Chess and Backgammon -- A medieval Persian source, describing how Chess came to Persia and how "backgammon" (games within the Tables) was invented. (more)
• The Playe of Chess -- Relatively high-resolution images at Digital Bodleian, from Caxton's English translation (c. 1483) of De ludo scachorum. One of the first books published in English! Not actually very useful from a rules POV, though: this is mostly moral philosophy, using Chess and its pieces as a metaphor. (more)
• The Compleat Gamester, 1725 edition -- A facsimile of a later (but still useful) edition of Cotton, available on Google Books. (more)
• Primero from Nare's Glossary -- Facsimile provided by Imran Ghory -- well post-period, but still interesting. (more)
• Historical playing cards -- A collection of images of historical playing cards. Many of these are from uncut sheets of woodblock printed cards. (more)
• Liber de Ludo Aleae (Book on Games of Chance) -- Gerolamo Cardano's work, Liber de Ludo Aleae, discusses the mathematical principles of card and dice games. The book was published in 1663, well after Cardano's death in 1576. (more)
• Vat.lat.5854 -- An apparently-anonymous (?), but large and interesting undated manuscript, full of what appears to be chess problems. The hand isn't the easiest to read, but appears to be Latin, and there is a lot of it. (more)
• Tractatus de scacchis, de tabulis et de merellis -- Online facsimile of an early 15th century book on Chess, Tables and Merels, containing bazillions of puzzles. Extremely neat! (more)
• Benedetto Varchi's Trattato delle proportioni et proportionalita -- A MS dated 1539 describing the Rithmomachia Pytagorae -- Rhythmomachy. (more)
• Wikipedia article on the painting 'Children's Games' -- 1560 oil painting of children playing various games by Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder. (more)
• Academie Universelle des Jeux (1758) -- An out-of-period but still very interesting edition of one of the earliest serious encyclopedias of games. (French) (more)
• de vetula, the 13th century d&d poem -- Blog page about rolling dice and the probability of outcomes in De Vetula (more)
• Repetición de amores y Arte de ajedrez -- Online facsimile of a 1497 Spanish book on Chess at the La Biblioteca Virtual del Patrimonio Bibliográfico (more)
• Description of Tamerlane Chess at The History of Chess site -- Goes into more detail about this game than most sites. (more)
• The Web Gallery of Art -- A useful virtual museum with a lot of period artworks. (more)