The territory of Trentino was influenced by different European powers over the centuries: by Venice in the
15th century, by France during the Napoleonic period at the beginning of the 19th century, and by the Austrian-Hungarian empire later. After each conquer, each government needed precise maps to control the territory. Today many of them, mapping the situations of Trentino, are archived in Venice, Paris, Vienna, Vienna, Belluno, Vicenza, Bassano, Innsbruck and other cities.
The office of the Autonomous Province of Trento in charge of the protection of the Cultural heritage and the Department of Humanities of the University of Trento signed an agreement to re-unite this treasure of information which is currently scattered around.
The Unit of Historical Geography Research within the Bernardino Bagoliny Laboratory will detect, identify and describe the maps, to then systematize the sources and interpret them in a scientific way. The Autonomous Province of Trento will digitalize the maps, photographing them with the cutting-edge techniques, in order to obtain high-quality copies and make them available to a larger number of experts and researchers.
Elena Dai Prà, professor at the Department of Humanities remarked that “The project focuses on unpublished handwritten maps, dating back to the period between the 16th and the 19th centuries and about which literature is very scarce. We will mainly deal with large-scale maps, i.e. those representing small areas of Trentino, providing very detailed information. All territories undergo geographic changes in history. In Trentino for example many hydraulics engineering works have been implemented.
They modified the route of the Adige River through Trento, thus dramatically changing the landscape. Up to now we identified and reproduced in digital pictures over 3,000 maps. Thanks to this agreement we will intensify our efforts and obtain even more significant results. I am very proud to involve young researchers in the project”.
Such ancient maps are often delicate objects, preserved in libraries, archives and museums. We need to acquire the documents to study them without moving the originals, which would risk to be damaged. Some maps are significant from the artistic viewpoint, like those of the Marciana Library and the Correr Museum in Venice.
Some small-scale maps were painted by Mercatore in the 16th century for the Republic of Venice include Trentino, although they do not exclusively regard this territory.
“The collection of the historical maps of Trentino and more in general the sources of the archives preserved in institutions outside the provincial territory is one of the institutional duties of the Province office”, added Armando Tomasi, Director of the Provincial Archive. “Our cooperation with the University of Trento will be extremely helpful, because we will join the skill set of both institutions, to reconstruct the maps of our territory which are scattered around in Europe. Our effort will not only regard the collection of the sources, but also the planning and implementation of dissemination actions, to disclose the scientific results to all people interested in the collected heritage”.