Cartografia e promozione del territorio: un approccio analitico-comparativo alle carte turistiche della Liguria del secondo dopoguerra

The importance of cartography in tourism is generally linked to the need tourists have to reach their destination and to move across an unknown geographical context using road maps or large-scale plans, recently replaced by geo-located applications through the use of smart phones. However, there is another dimension of such cartography which uses the communicative power and readability of maps for the promotion of tourist destinations. Such products, generally known as pictorial maps, need to combine geometrical accuracy of cartographical representation and aesthetic appeal providing tourists with an effective synthesis of the offer of a certain destination without neglecting practical and logistic information. This paper introduces a novel analysis of tourist cartography of post-war Liguria focussing on two pictorial maps made by the graphic designer and artist Aldo Cigheri held at the Historical Archive of Regione Liguria. These documents are analysed and classified based on their features, particularly the covered areas, the style of representation, symbols categories and choice of subjects. Through the study of tourist cartography in Liguria, the paper aims at underlining how such products contributed to define the tourist offer and the image of Liguria in the years of the Economic Boom, suggesting a reflection on how tourist promotion strategies have evolved from the post-war period to present day