Italy Map 1860 Garibaldi Era Atlas Print - Rome, Naples, Palermo, Genoa, Valletta

This General Map of Italy, including Sicily, Malta, Sardinia, Corsica and other islands, is a later edition of the map issued by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, published in London around 1860. It is a fine example of this later edition of the Society's map. The sheet takes in the whole peninsula together with the islands in the title, so Sicily, Malta, Sardinia and Corsica all appear beside the mainland. It is a map of the general kind used in family atlases, drawn to give the reader an overview of the country instead of a regional close-up, and issued by a society whose aim was to bring accurate maps to a wide public. Its clear outlines and plain lettering make it an easy map to read.

The date is important. About 1860 Giuseppe Garibaldi began the campaign that ended with the Expedition of the Thousand: volunteers sailed from Quarto, near Genoa, landed at Marsala in Sicily and went on to take the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from the Bourbons. A plebiscite then brought Naples and Sicily into the Kingdom of Sardinia, the last conquest before the Kingdom of Italy was created in March 1861. A map from those months therefore shows a country on the brink of becoming one. It is a historical document of an extraordinary year. It is a good companion for any study of the year.

A reader of the Risorgimento, a family with roots in Genoa, Naples, Sicily or Malta, or a collector of British society atlas maps will find a meaningful gift here. TheMapVault's Letts sheet of 1865 is a later issue of the same map, whereas this 1860 edition belongs to the year of Garibaldi's campaign. 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.