Acque di costa tra mare e terra: il paesaggio della pianura costiera di Pisa e Livorno secondo la cartografia del XVIII secolo

Coastal waters. Between sea and land. Landscape of coastal plain of Pisa and Livorno in the historic cartography of the eighteenth century - Coast Pisa Leghorn Cartography Landscape This paper is based on large scale maps produced during the eighteenth century, mostly from 1740, the year of Pompeo Neri and Tommaso Perelli’s general survey. The commissioners were main landlords (Salviati, Mensa Archivescovile of Pisa, Scrittoio delle Regie Possessioni) and Lorena’s administrative offices responsible for public works, political-administrative control of the territory and management of the large number of farms and public estates. The comparative analysis of these documents allows us to reconstruct the territorial arrangement of the plain north and south of the Arno River (between Massaciuccoli and Leghorn), and the transformation that took place after the 1740. The different environments and landscapes that follow one after the other, from the sea to the inland, emerge under a geomorphologic-hydrologic profile (shores, sand hills, swamps, low and high plains) and a vegetation profile(evergreen forest, pine forest, swamp forest, natural pastures and artificial lawns, cultivations). Dynamics related with the human action are also highlighted. They are concerned with water streams, artificial canals, fences of land reclamation, roads, and the few human stable and temporary settlements, beyond Pisa, Leghorn and the coastal fortresses, that exploited agricultural and forest resources.

Anna Guarducci, Anna Piccardi, Leonardo Rombai, Acque di costa tra mare e terra: il paesaggio della pianura costiera di Pisa e Livorno secondo la cartografia del XVIII secolo in "STORIA URBANA " 125/2009, pp 35-58, DOI: 10.3280/SU2009-125003