Guida d'Italia - Albania - 1940

The volume belongs to one of the most prestigious cartographic and documentary series of the first half of the Italian twentieth century. Its publication occurred at a precise and dramatic historical moment. In 1940, Albania was under occupation and the union with the Italian crown (which had occurred in 1939). This manual was not conceived as a mere pleasure guide, but as an institutional and logistical operation tied to Italy's geopolitical expansion in the Balkans. The volume was produced in collaboration with the Subsecretariat of State for Albanian Affairs, with the strategic aim of surveying, mapping, and making the territory known to both military troops and the Italian technicians sent to the area. As happened with all publications of the Touring Club Italiano of that era, the association had to italianize its name to Consociazione Turistica Italiana due to the regime’s autarkic language laws. The work is renowned for the immense precision of its scientific data and for its extraordinary cartographic apparatus. The seven geographic maps and the urban plans (which show cities such as Tirana, Durrës, and Shkodër before the devastations of World War II and the subsequent urban changes of the communist regime) constitute today a primary and irreplaceable historical source for geographers and historians of the Balkans. The stated print run on the title page of 10,000 copies was relatively modest for the Touring’s standards of the era, which makes the volume uncommon.

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