Northern Italy Map 1872 Railways Family Atlas Print - Milan, Venice, Turin, Genoa, Bologna

This Italy I was published by Edward Stanford of London in 1872 in The Family Atlas, whose eighty maps were engraved on steel under the supervision of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It is the northern sheet of three, 42 by 30 centimeters at a scale of 1:1,750,000, hand colored in pink, yellow, blue and purple to separate the regions. The catalog notes the Alps, the Adriatic Sea and the course of the Po, with major cities, rivers and mountain ranges marked. Roads and railways are shown, and a scale bar is included, so the sheet works as a practical travelers' map as well as a record of geography. A geological map of England and a set of star maps appear elsewhere in the same volume, which shows the range of the Family Atlas.

It is map number 35 in the atlas, on page 26, and a somewhat updated version of the 1865 issue. By 1872 the railway network of the north had grown rapidly, linking Milan, Turin and Venice, and the map presents it in the same hand-colored scheme as the political divisions. The Veneto had joined the kingdom only in 1866, so the sheet records one of the first mapped views of the unified north. The Society's steel-engraved maps were intended to bring educational information to a wide public, and this one shows that aim in its clarity.

A reader of railway history, a family with roots in Lombardy, Piedmont or the Veneto, or a collector of Victorian atlas maps will find a useful gift here. TheMapVault's Orr sheet of 1832 shows the same north before unification, whereas this Stanford sheet of 1872 carries the railways that came after it. Like every print in the collection, it ships unframed and is available in a full range of sizes, from a compact desk piece to a large-format statement print.