ALMAGIÀ, ROBERTO

ALMAGIÀ, ROBERTO (1884–1962), Italian geographer and historian of cartography. He was born in Florence and in 1911 became professor at the University of Padua, which he left in 1915 to become professor in Rome. His early interests lay in geology and oceanography, but he moved to the history of geographical science and finally to the history of cartography. His first published work was Studi geografici sopra le frane in Italia (2 vols., 1907 and 1910). His Cristoforo Colombo appeared in 1918, and in 1937, Gli italiani primi esploratori dell'America, in which he dealt in detail with the Italian contribution to the discovery of America. From 1920 he was co-editor of the Rivista Geografica Italiana, published by the Società di Studi Geografici, of which he became president in 1955. In 1922 he published L' "Italia" di G.A. Magini e la cartografia dell'Italia nei sec. xvi e xvii. He edited in 1929 Monumenta Italiae Cartographica, a volume of reproductions of early maps of Italy. During World War ii he was granted refuge in the Vatican, where he prepared Monumenta cartografica Vaticana (4 vols., 1944–55). Il mondo attuale (3 vols., 1953–56) and L'Italia (2 vols., 1959) are his outstanding works on general and Italian geography. Almagià achieved an international reputation and was the recipient of many honors. His interest in a Jewish homeland is shown in his La Questione della Palestina (1918), Una Escursione in Palestina (1925), and Palestina (1930).

bibliography:

Geographical Journal, 128 (1962), 367–8. add. bibliography: S. Boorsh, "The Case for Francesco Rosselli as the Engraver of Berlinghieri's Geographia," in: Imago Mundi 56:2 (2004), 152–69.