Cartografie dell'Italia

(Cartographies of Italy)

Abstract

In a provocative manner, I compare two cartographic representations of Italy: the one by the Northern League’s Minister Calderoli, which was circulated last Christmas as a holiday card, and the one by Al-Idrisi, a genial cartographer and scientist at the court of the Normand King Roger II. They share the unusual perspective of an upside down Italy; that is, with Sicily in the North. Such a reversal aside, they reveal completely different visions: the “reversed” Italy that Al-Idrisi proposes, unlike the one by the Northern League, is an Italy that sees its own propelling center in Sicily, and that considers the Mediterranean as the sea space that constitutes a bridge with the North-African coast. The Muslim Al-Idrisi describes a world that does not simply belong to the past but has rather become extraordinarily actual today. Roger’s kingdom, which was the embryo of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies whose endurance lasts until the unification of Italy, which was the breeding ground of art and knowledge, curious and welcoming toward other cultures, respectful of diverse religious faiths, is perhaps the not only nostalgic projection of the other Italy we may wish to “find again.”