Giovanni Capellini’s journey to Wallachia (1864): travel notes and early insights into Petroleum Geology

During his intense academic and public life Giovanni Capellini, recognized as one of the leading Italian geoscientists of the 19th Century, was also involved in studies concerning petroleum geology, a discipline still in its infancy at the time. Capellini was engaged in this novel discipline early in his career, as an academic consultant on behalf of domestic and foreign oil companies, and published several studies on this subject. A recent survey of archival sources at the University of Bologna revealed a travelogue of his journeys to Wallachia that he organized in 1864-1865 as a consultant to an English oil company. The manuscript, still fully unpublished, is kept in the archives of the Geological Collection “Giovanni Capellini Museum”. Although it contains geomorphological notes, stratigraphic sketches and various geological cross sections, the typical contents of the surveyor geologist field notebook, the travelogue is also an agenda of daily life events, structured in a sort of travel diary, albeit minimal in its narrative structure. This manuscript offers a first-hand account of the varied activity of a young geologist already fully integrated into the European cultural milieu.