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The map edition " The projection of the Maltese port currently besieged by the Turks"

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2024

Abstract

The article presents a news edition of 4 maps that have not been described as a whole so far. The last of them, the 2nd piece was discovered in the Map Collection of the Faculty of Science of Charles University several years ago.

The Great Siege of Malta is one of the most historic moments in the battles for Mediterranean. Therefore, even the existence of new documents about the progress of the fighting can be very essential for the future research.

The article describes the personality of the map publisher F. G.

Camocio and puts him into a wider framework of the so called Lafreri School that was the flagship of the Italian Renaissance cartography. The cardinal and critical moments of the Great Siege, which took place from May to September 1565 are described.

It also speaks highly of the main personalities featured in the conflict between the Turks and the Catholic Christian Europe. The individual parts of the map edition are gradually described and compared.

They inform not only about the course of the fighting but they are also an evidence of the memory of the landscape and the city before the great reconstruction. Their great importance is demonstrated also by the entry in the UNESCO Memory of the World Registry in 2017.