A large map of Italy published in Milan in 1920 by the De Agostini Geographical Institute, depicting the country’s national identity and its recent imperial ambitions in the aftermath of World War I.
The map visually captures the historic territorial gains resulting from the conflict with the Austro-Hungarian Empire: Trentino, South Tyrol (with the border shifted to the Brenner Pass), Venezia Giulia, Trieste, Istria, and Zadar. It is the image of “Greater Italy” finally unified within its natural geographical borders, but it is also the portrait of a country facing the complex administrative and infrastructural transition toward the modernity of the 20th century.
In the upper right corner, the map features a large cartouche containing a comprehensive legend of conventional symbols. This legend not only meticulously distinguishes the administrative hierarchies of the state (capital cities, provincial capitals, district capitals, and municipal capitals), but also precisely outlines the transportation infrastructure, the backbone of the nation. Alongside the dense network of railway lines (main, secondary, and under construction), the wealth of information dedicated to maritime routes stands out. The Mediterranean is crisscrossed by a dense network of shipping routes and transatlantic and coastal shipping lines, with travel times expressed in days or hours—a detail that transforms the map into a vivid snapshot of the logistical and economic efficiency of the era.
The perimeter of the composition is entirely surrounded by a heraldic sequence of dozens of coats of arms, representing the historical crests of the provinces of the Kingdom of Italy.
This traditionally styled choice takes on an exquisitely modern and scientific significance here: associated with each coat of arms, in fact, is the number of inhabitants of the respective province. The map thus combines political geography with demography, offering at a glance a visual statistical census of the Italian population in the early 1920s.
The geopolitical ambitions of the Italian state and the consolidation of its overseas possessions are explicitly celebrated in the two large cartographic inserts located at the bottom of the panel, which extend the nation’s borders toward the African continent:
– In the lower left, a large panel is dedicated to Libya (comprising Tripolitania and Cyrenaica), a colony where Italy, following the war of 1911–12, was laboriously beginning the work of pacification and the initial mapping and infrastructure development.
– At the bottom right, a second inset depicts the territories of the historic colonies of Italian East Africa, Eritrea, and Somalia, key hubs of Italy’s commercial and military presence in the Horn of Africa and along the Indian Ocean routes.
