This section of the exhibition forms a sort of ‘map room’, which brings together not only ancient depictions of the territory of the region – including some famous maps of the fifteenth-century, real “Monuments” of Italian cartography – but also the instruments used and treatises written by cartographers of the day. Portolans and island maps reveal the importance of the sea as a means of trade and as an area of exploration, whilst maps of the terraferma chart how attention then shifted to the administration of mainland dominions. The show also includes Cristoforo Sorte’s five large maps of The Mainland State, an unrivalled example of government-inspired cartography (two of these works are on loan from a museum in Vienna, two from a private collection in Venice). One then passes on to look at the cartography produced as part of the ‘management of water resources’, concerned not only with Venice and its sea defences, but also with projects to defend the lagoon against the silt brought by rivers, proposals for land reclamation and drainage, and schemes for using water to power a variety of manufactories. The last part of this review covers such things as military cartography (plans of defences and fortresses, as well as depictions of battles), cartography as an instrument of public health control or road-planning, and even maps drawn up as part of a response to natural disasters (for example, floods). And, finally, comes cartography as an agent of scholarly erudition, a sophisticated instrument for exploring the history, archaeology and legends of a region.