La Gran Carta d’Italia: un Paese da immaginare e da costruire

The Gran Carta d’Italia (1845) does not convey an explicit economic vision, yet it offers significant clues for reconstructing the cultural, economic, and symbolic context of pre unification Italy. Through an analysis of the allegory and the dedication to Adriano Balbi, the article interprets the map as a representation of a nation not yet existing in political or economic terms, but already imagined as a historical and territorial community. The essay is structured around the contrast between an “Italy that does not yet exist”, marked by deep economic and territorial disparities, and an “Italy that seeks to exist”, shaped by the circulation of ideas and by the valorization of the so called useful knowledges. Within this framework, geography emerges as a central form of knowledge in the process of “making Italians”, in dialogue with economics, statistics, and law. The thought of Adriano Balbi and Carlo Cattaneo brings into focus a conception of geography as an applied form of knowledge, oriented toward civilization, development, and the construction of national identity