Cartaditalia was created in 2008 at the Italian Cultural Institute in Stockholm. This project aims to offer the international audience orientation tools consisting in ‘maps’ (Cartaditalia actually means ‘a map of Italy’) of the most diverse fields of Italian art and culture in the new Millennium; the maps are made by the best specialists in each field.
The Italian Cultural Institute in Brussels has re-worked publications from 2015 to 2019 giving them a new graphic format and translating them into four languages (Italian, French, Dutch and English).
Each of these monographic issues provides a broad and topical overview of its subject matter. The following are available for free download:
- Cartaditalia n. 1 | Cinema of the real: the Italian documentary 2000-2015
The first issue investigates the genre of the documentary film, with the intention to follow Italian culture ‘live’, as it develops and evolves. It has been edited by one of the most knowledgeable scholars of Italian cinema, Emiliano Morreale, lecturer at the University of Turin and director of the Cineteca Nazionale (Italian National Film Library) in Rome. - Cartaditalia n. 2 | Italian design. Unity and plurality
This issue turns its cartographic exploration to design, one of the creative activities that have contributed the most to the symbolic construction of Italy’s image worldwide. The coordinator of this issue is Beppe Finessi, one of the curators of the 21st edition of the Milan Triennale and a Lecturer at the Politecnico di Milano. He asked a group of renowned specialists to outline the history and geography of Italian design in order to explore one of the most emblematic areas of Made in Italy. - Cartaditalia n. 3 | New frontiers of Italian Scientific Research
This issue focuses on the new frontiers of science and is edited by two journalists who specialize in scientific popularisation, Luca De Biase and Guido Romeo. It gives the floor to young under-40 Italian researchers who work in the departments and laboratories of universities all around the world. The issue offers a detailed and up-to-date overview of the main areas of interest of contemporary scientific investigation, together with a true map of major Italian research centres. - Cartaditalia n. 4 | The Graphic Novel and the Italian comic strip
This issue deals with one of the most important phenomena of the Italian cultural scene of the new Millennium and explores its relationship with the long tradition of Italian comics. This monograph edited by Giovanni Russo is an invitation to discover a fascinating creative universe through a journey that takes the reader from the precursors, Dino Buzzati, Hugo Pratt and Andrea Pazienza, up to the extraordinary growth of new talents, some of whom have already been acknowledged as masters, such as Gipi and Zerocalcare. - Cartaditalia n. 5 | Italian literature. The new century
This monograph has the ambitious aim of taking stock of the current situation of novels, poetry and non-fiction in Italy, at a time when so many attempts are being made to survey and critically assess the most recent literary production. Edited by Emanuele Zinato with the collaboration of Valentino Baldi, Marianna Marrucci and Morena Marsilio, Cartaditalia is not an exhaustive inventory, but rather proposes selective, certainly debatable approaches which aim to be starting points for a broader critical debate on contemporary literature. - Cartaditalia Special Edition |Volume 1 |Volume 2
2018 European Year of Cultural Heritage
On the occasion of the European Year of Cultural Heritage declared by the European Union, the journal has taken the opportunity to try and ‘take stock’ of the situation as regards political and scientific debate on cultural heritage. To properly address such an arduous task, given the complexity and variety of the implications of the ‘heritage issue’, the monograph looks at it from a European perspective, entrusts Pier Luigi Sacco as its editor and features contributions scholars and specialists from all over Europe.