The thematic atlas of Italy by the Touring Club Italiano

The review examines the Touring Club Italiano’s Atlante Tematico d’Italia, tracing its compilation through the 1980 CNR–TCI agreement, the first volume’s appearance in 1989 and completion in March 1993. Its 126 loose-leaf plates cover physical environments, population and settlements, economic resources and activities, and cultural heritage and the environment. Intended chiefly for the general public, the atlas emphasizes changes between the 1951 and 1981 censuses. The reviewer explains how movable plates facilitate comparison and allow updated sheets to be added while retaining earlier ones as historical documentation; such updating was envisaged, not reported as completed. The review describes the Lambert equal-area conic projection and principal scales of 1:4,000,000 and 1:8,000,000, accepting the small scales as a practical compromise between thematic coverage and manageable format. It praises the cartographic communication, with reservations about occasional ambiguous colour tones, and cautions that the second volume’s population graph extending back before 1861 rests on reasonably precise data only from the seventeenth century onward. The reviewer also commends the atlas’s teaching potential and its broad presentation of geographical relationships.