Il Po e la sua cartografia fra Antico Regime ed età contemporanea

The Po River Cartography between the Ancien Régime and the present Age The cartography of Po plain has shown the complicated political fragmentation along the river over centuries: from the Middle Ages the river did not connect people and towns as waterways often do, but mostly constituted a border, along which skirmishes and wars happened from time to time. Printed cartography often represented the river as a unitary object, even though the area was sub-divided into numerous States. Only after the political Unification of Italy (1861), the complete large-scale survey of the Po river (the so called Carte Brioschi) was carried out, in order to plan actions on the flow streams of Po itself and its affluents, reinforcement of embankments and reclamations in the surrounding lands. Previously, the small States of the Po plain did not have the capability to perform all these tasks.