The items on display were bequeathed to the museum by Armando Morbiato, whose cartographic collections are the results of an insatiable passion and a life of adventure that led him to the four corners of the world, from Europe to Australia, from Africa to the Americas.
Born in Padova in 1933, the eldest of seven brothers, Armando Morbiato grew up in the small village of Camin, in an agricultural area on the outskirts of the city. In 1944, having completed elementary school, he was sent in the usual way to the workshop of an artisan to learn a trade, and two years later became an apprentice in the Cacco carpentry shop, where he remained until 1957. However, unlike most other boys, Armando nurtured a different instinct, that of the traveller: a propensity for discovery, for novelty, for the search of new horizons.
Morbiato began to discover the world through his friend Elia’s copy of the Atlante De Agostini and he remained fascinated by it. He consulted and admired the book whenever possible, planning itineraries as a young “dreamer.” Then, on a visit to Villa Giovanelli, where he went with his master Cacco to repair some antique furniture, he had an unforgettable experience: resting on a lectern in the centre of the wealthy owner’s library was Antonio Zatta’s Atlante novissimo, printed in Venice in 1785, opened on a map of the eastern part of North America. Armando was left thunderstruck, overwhelmed by an indelible emotion. It was through that encounter that a new awareness arose within him: “the desire for the world,” as he would later call it in his memoirs.
Unable to settle for a comfortable life in little Camin, Armando decided to indulge his wanderlust, setting out on a path to self-realisation through knowledge and adventure. In July 1957 he left home with the only asset he had at his disposal, the most precious of all: his trade. He emigrated to Australia, but rather than being a typical emigrant, he was one who combined the need to improve his economic situation with the curiosity of the explorer who studied itineraries, searched for new lands to discover and new people to meet, enriching in that way his life experience.
Our explorer set sail aboard the MS Aurelia from the port of Genoa on 4 July 1957. On the voyage he caught his first glimpse of Africa, a sight that aroused an intense emotion of which he made mention in his letters:
At 7:20 a thin strip of land appears to the south: it is Africa, I know it and it leaves a certain impression. For years I have considered it almost a myth, and now I am here.
Crossing the Indian Ocean, he finally arrived in Sydney. This was in fact the first stage of an almost uninterrupted journey which would lead him to discover a large part of the world. He remained in Australia until June 1961, when he began the long return trip that would bring him, via Southeast Asia, Japan and Siberia, back to Italy the following October. From 1962 to 1964 he worked in Germany and Switzerland, and on 8 December 1964, with his brother Francesco, he left Camin for Cape Town in a Fiat 600.
We leave at 7:30. Dad with his hand on the roof of the 600, almost in a final attempt to keep us here, accompanies us to the end of Strada Liguria in Camin. We both make a huge effort to hold back the lumps in our throats.
After sixty-six days of travel, on 11 February 1965 the two arrived in Cape Town. Having returned with Francesco in June 1966, by August Armando was already in London and, in October, had reached Canada. He then crossed the Americas from north to south, ending his decade of travel in Buenos Aires. He finally returned to Italy for good in June 1967.
Back in his home country, Armando returned to work in a factory. If his time as a tireless traveller might have been finished, the restless passion for cartography acquired as a child was about to burst into his life with new force, opening a new, important chapter. Maps would become the means that allowed him to continue travelling. At the end of the 1960s this passion prompted him to become a regular visitor to the Perini antiquarian bookshop in Verona, where for a mere 50 or 100 lire he would buy loose sheets or pages of volumes from between the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries from the “waste” drawer, literally saving from destruction and elevating them to “pieces” in a personal collection that began to take shape and become upgraded with increasingly important items. In 1979, encouraged by a friend, he tried his hand for the first time as a vendor in the Brugine market, which became a fixture for him until 1981, the year in which he became licensed and finally transformed his passion into a profession. Armando Morbiato, the dreamer, the traveller, the explorer, the collector, and now the dealer. Thus it was that he began to attend various Italian markets, from Asolo, to Venice, Mantua, Città di Castello, Fano, up to Sorrento, and specialised in the repair of torn or damaged antique papers, which he gave a new lease of life. Having become a professional, a collector and an expert vendor – recognised even at the international level – and a regular presence at the sector’s principal European trade fairs, Armando came to own an extensive and valuable collection. His love for the atlases and maps he had collected, his awareness of their value not only material but also as a repository of geographical knowledge of the world, induced him, in 2021, to donate a substantial part of the collection to the Museum of Geography of the University of Padova, to make of it a patrimony accessible to all who shared, or might come to share, his passion. Hence Armando Morbiato is a benefactor to us all.