Italy Map 1881 Post-Unification Provinces Atlas Print - Rome, Naples, Palermo, Trieste, San Marino

Gray's New Map of Italy was published in Philadelphia in 1881 by Frank A. Gray. It is hand colored by province, showing post-unification Italy, with insets of Mount Etna, San Marino and the environs of Palermo, Naples and Rome. The provinces of Trento and Trieste are shown as part of Austria-Hungary, and both the names of the old divisions, such as kingdoms and duchies, and the modern provinces are provided. The sheet therefore records the country twice, as it had been before 1861 and as it was twenty years later, which makes it an unusually informative reference for anyone tracing an Italian family. Both the old divisions and the modern provinces are named on the sheet, which makes it a convenient key for tracing family places.

In 1881 Italy was a united kingdom under Umberto I, with Rome as its capital since 1870, and the unredeemed lands of Trento and Trieste were a political issue that would last until the First World War. Gray was one of the best-known Philadelphia map publishers of the 1870s and 1880s, and his atlases and county maps served American readers who wanted current information. The insets of Palermo, Naples and Rome give the three great cities of the peninsula their own panels, and Mount Etna and the small republic of San Marino add variety. Such a sheet suits readers who need to match old names with modern ones.

A collector of American late-Victorian atlas maps, a family with roots in an Italian province, or a genealogist who wants old and new names together will find a very practical gift here. TheMapVault's 1860 and 1865 maps show the same country in its first years, whereas this Gray sheet of 1881 shows it settled. 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.