Abstract

Lucio Gambi was more interested in the development of the "Cartography in History" than in the foundation of the "History of Cartography" as an autonomous discipline proposed in the same years by J.B. Harley in Europe and Us. Maps had to be studied for Gambi in a deep connection with other historical documents. Alink was, infact, in Gambi's concern, between his critical statements about the concept of geographic landscape and his idea of map-making: both were representations to be connected to other written historical documents. Notwithstanding they were cultural constructions filtered by culture, strategies and power, Maps had to be considered mainly - Gambi underlined in his works - for the informations transmitted about specific and local con¬texts, not as universal models. Gambi's scientific ideas very much influenced Italian History of Cartog¬raphy in the Sixties and Seventies, but his methodology was stressed in dif¬ferent and sometime opposite ways of thinking during the years of the critical refoundation of Italian Geography.