Launch of 'Travelling Maps' virtual exhibition - 2 Dec 2022

On the 2nd of December, during the celebration of the third anniversary of our Museum of Geography, the first virtual exhibition of the museum, “Travelling maps”, was launched. The virtual exhibition is based on a series of old atlases, maps, and guide books collected by Armando Morbiato during his travels around the globe and generously donated to our Museum. First released as a temporary exhibition of 9 maps and books (the oldest dating back to 1493) hosted at the Sala della Musica one year ago, in occasion of the presentation of the book by Morbiato, L’incanto del viaggiatore, the exhibition is now available in a virtual and enriched version on the online Library System of the University of Padua at https://mostre.cab.unipd.it/travelling-maps/.
Inspired by a mobility-based approach, the virtual exhibition starts with an introduction to the relationship between maps and mobilities; it continues by presenting the donor’s own biographical mobilities, through a series of quotes from Morbiato’s travel diaries and an interview carried out at his deposit on occasion of the first donation. The exhibition further includes an interactive map of the travels made by the featured maps across the past centuries before arriving at our Museum together with a series of beautiful scanned images of the old maps and ancient atlases now preserved at the Museum. The exhibition also provides a close reading of a series of Ex Libris through which the virtual visitor experiences the routes travelled by such fascinating cartographic objects.
An English version of the exhibition will be available soon, to allow our maps and atlases to continue their digital travels beyond the Museum’s walls!