Toponymy and Cartography between History and Geography

The cover of the symposium booklet graphically shows the known and essential relationship between Toponymy and Cartography. This double connection takes on greater importance in a diachronic perspective, because it offers to scholars a fundamental source to understand the stages of the appropriation and the transformation of territory by Man and provides an indispensable aid for preserving the collective memory of places. To this end, the paper proposes a quick historical review of the relationships between Toponymy and Cartography from the ancient, medieval and modern maps to the first scientific maps of the 18th century and later. At the end, the article proposes a consideration on the relationship between Toponymy and Cartography in the present day, highlighting the problematic aspect of updating maps, with regard to the loss of knowledge of the places affected by the changed rapport between Man and his territory.