The Mediterranean Sea is still in the 1500s a fundamental way of communication and commercial exchange and an object of contention for the supremacy, but it is the great ocean navigations, the consequent geographical discoveries and the expeditions of conquest of the new lands to characterize the XVI century, which is also the period in which the printed book spreads.
On display are two books of great importance: the Libro di Benedetto Bordone nel qual si ragiona di tutte l’isole del mondo con li lor nomi antichi e moderni, (Book of Benedetto Bordone in which they are illustrated all the islands of the world with their ancient and modern names) printed in Venezia in 1528, an illustrious example of “isolari”, and a nautical atlas printed at the end of the century in Amsterdam, the Description de la Mer Mediterranee of the captain Guillaume Bernard.
The sea and the ships are also protagonists of the early seventeenth century manuscript by Robert Dudley, navigator, naval engineer and cartographer at the service of the Medicis, who introduces the theme of the commercial policy and the naval power of Tuscany.
The Theatrum orbis terrarum by Abraham Ortelius, which is considered the first modern atlas, and the Harmonia macrocosmica by Andreas Cellarius, a work that recalls the Theatrum orbis terrarum of Abraham Ortelius and the horizon of the sailor picturing the sky and the constellations, completes the types of ancient editions of this type but also the ideal path of the traveller.
The printed volumes are part of the geography section of the Humanities Library collection. The geographical studies could count within the Institute of Higher Studies on figures of particular value: initially Bartolomeo Malfatti, then Giovanni Marinelli and his son Olinto, who gave a crucial contribution to the evolution of the discipline and made Florence a point of reference, with the organization of two international conferences and the foundation of the Society for Geographical Studies. The Society's volumes and papers have merged into the humanistic collection, which also preserves the Marinelli Collection, consisting of the richly endowed private collection of the two geographers.
