Le "Carte di situazione" di Prima Guerra Mondiale del Comando Supremo dell'Esercito Italiano: decodifichi ed interpretazioni semiologiche per una fruizione applicativa = The First World War ‘situation maps’ of the Italian Army High Command: decoding and semiological interpretations for applicative use

The First World War represented a watershed in terms of the conduct of warfare, posing as a moment of strong innovation and experimentation in numerous elds, widely investigated by international historiography. The systematic and massive use of cartographic support as a bidirectional vehicle of information between the decision-making centres and the frontline represents a topic of profound interest for the historical and geographical study of the con ict: in this, the mode of symbolic representation used by the individual armies constitutes a fundamental piece of knowledge to be able to decipher cartographic production both as a historical source and as a cartographic document. The paper intends to present the rst results of a study conducted on the collection of top-level maps produced by the Italian General Staff in the years 1915-1920 and preserved to date in the Historical Archive of the Italian Army. First, the corpus is presented and then an initial analysis is carried out on the symbology adopted, attempting to provide some considerations on the evolution of the signs and then presenting the project – still in progress - of an explanatory handbook of Italian First World War symbology.