2021 Essays

Questa macchina mondiale: Thresholds and circulations through Spanish Italy and the Iberian Americas in Lorenzo Anania’s La Universal Fabrica del Mondo (Naples, 1573).

Russo, Alessandra

It’s an Italy without Rome, Venice, or Florence (fig. 1)—an “Italia” whose unique readable city is Napoli, nestled in a gulf embraced by the toponyms of Apruso (Abbruzzo), Terra d’Otranto (Puglia), Calabria, and by the islands of Sicilia and Sardegna. On the west tip of Sicily, one reads Lilibeo (“pointing toward Africa,” according to Pliny the Elder), the ancient Phoenician-Punic city whose port was blocked by Charles V to protect it from the Ottoman incursions. On the southern tip, Pachino, from whose functioning port of Palo in Capo Passero one could rapidly reach the island of Malta, represented in the map as standing in the middle of the Mediterranean.