Abandoned Italy Map: 24 Maps of Missiles, Dragons and Mafia

More than 102,000 maps on MapIndex lie in Italy, and a surprising share of them keep the country’s unfinished stories. People pin where Aldo Moro was held in 1978, which sunken freighters may hold toxic barrels, and which towns Rome dissolved for mafia infiltration. Others tell older tales: 267 places where a dragon lived or died, one man’s reconstruction of a 1954 UFO landing in Tuscany, and the shepherds and fishermen who saw lights over the sea. The Cold War front on the eastern border has its own mappers, down to the American tank turrets still set in concrete along the Tagliamento.

Cold War Italy Map: Jupiter, Nike and Hawk Missile Sites

Ten Jupiter sites in Puglia and Basilicata, from Acquaviva delle Fonti to Altamura and Gioia del Colle, are where Italy once kept nuclear medium-range missiles aimed east. Skatto65’s map of 807 objects sets them beside 20 Nike and 12 Hawk sites, and 18 ACE High stations of NATO’s radio network under their codes, IAVZ for Aviano and ICCZ for Monte Lauro in Sicily. The three defence lines facing Yugoslavia take up the rest: barracks, observation posts and the small casermette on the hills around Castelmonte and the Bocche di Calla.

Objects

807675 points, 132 lines

Countries

ItalySlovenia

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OpenStreetMap uMap
Italian Dragon Map: 267 Lairs, Legends and Bones

The dragon of Stigliano, known since 1550, preferred girls named Margherita. That one-line note is typical of this map of 267 Italian dragons, each pinned where it lived, died or left a bone behind. The dragon of Villafalletto had seven heads, and a bridge was made from its body. St Silvester tamed the one at Fornole in a cave of 365 steps, and St Peter killed Sardinia’s petrifying Scultone with a mirror. A little dragon described in 1550 by Ulisse Aldrovandi of Bologna went into his natural history museum. In Almenno San Salvatore a huge rib is said to be a dragon’s. Every pin cites its source.

Objects

267259 points, 8 lines

Countries

ItalySwitzerlandSloveniaand 4 more

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Aldo Moro Kidnapping Map: The 55 Days, Street by Street

At 9:02 on 16 March 1978 a Red Brigades commando opened fire on Via Fani and took Aldo Moro. This map follows him from there: each getaway street, the car swaps at Via Bitossi and Via Licinio Calvo, the flat at Via Montalcini 8 where he was held for 55 days, and Via Caetani, where his body was found. The side stories make it. The hideout at Via Gradoli 96 was found because a neighbour noticed water leaking from the flat. During a seance near Bologna a few academics got the word “Gradoli”, and the police searched the village of that name instead. The last point is his grave at Torrita Tiberina.

Objects

5151 points

Countries

Italy

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OpenStreetMap uMap
Poison Ships Map: Suspected Toxic Wrecks off Italy

On 12 September 2009 a robot filmed a wreck 472 metres down, 20 nautical miles off Cetraro. A turncoat had named it as the Cunsky, sunk with toxic waste. Six weeks later a government mission declared it a steamer sunk in 1917. This map marks both points and a third, the “possible real position”. Its 35 ships come from Legambiente’s dossier on suspicious sinkings, each with flag, owner and declared cargo. The Jolly Rosso ran aground at Amantea in 1990 with 9,532 barrels of waste. The tanker Esram, caught dumping off the Gargano in 1995, rammed and sank the fishing boat that saw it.

Objects

3534 points, 1 line

Countries

Italy

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Monumental Trees Map: Italy's 5,250 Registered Giants

A larch at Chiesa in Valmalenco was certified 1,009 years old in 2014 by the University of Padua. It is one of 5,250 entries in Italy’s national register of monumental trees, each with its code, species and the reason it qualified. A vine in South Tyrol was planted in 1601 from a cutting of an even older one. Size, age or landscape value earn a tree its place. One layer, ELIMINATI, keeps the trees removed from the list after felling. Among them is the American maple at Laives, planted in 1908 for Emperor Franz Joseph’s jubilee.

Objects

5,2505,250 points

Countries

ItalySloveniaAustria

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UFO Sightings Map Italy: Eight Decades of Eyewitnesses

In 1938 a fisherman and 15 others off Ostia watched an object rise from the sea and hover over their boat for half an hour. Back home he painted it, and decades later the painting hung in his grandson’s bar. Hundreds of such first-person accounts fill this map, each under year and place: a 17-year-old near Siracusa in 1967, a driver between Alghero and Sassari at 4:30 one August morning in 1993, an orange sphere filmed over Ardea for 3 minutes 26 seconds in 2011. Then the mapper adds what a sceptic needs: layers of airports, military bases, nuclear plants and the stations that launch weather balloons.

Objects

787787 points

Countries

ItalyGermanySpainand 3 more

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Prisoners of War Map: Russians and Serbs in WWI Trentino

Captured Russian and Serbian soldiers worked behind the Austro-Hungarian front in Trentino, and this map finds their traces in 80 places. About 80 prisoners, lodged in a house attic, built the airfield at Croviana in 1917. Others built the Vigo di Fassa war cemetery, where 663 soldiers lie. On 19 January 1917 a landslide at a quarry near Panchià killed 55 of them. Place names still remember them: two passes called the Bocchette dei Russi, which escaping prisoners crossed to the Italian lines, and a Fossa dei Russi, a pit where the dead were said to be thrown. Every point cites its book.

Objects

8080 points

Countries

Italy

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OpenStreetMap uMap
Abandoned Places Italy Map: 488 Urbex Sites

A French explorer named Marin Bisson mapped 488 abandoned places in Italy and named each in Italian and French: the Grand Hotel Eden above Lake Maggiore, the cursed monastery (“il monastero maledetto”), the ghost town of Craco, the Chiarini barracks in Bologna. Most lie in the north. Dry aquaparks recur, from Aquatica Park near Rimini to the water park at Itri. Few points carry notes, so the map works as a raw list of places to look up.

Objects

488488 points

Countries

ItalySwitzerland

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap
Mafia Infiltration Map: 336 Councils the State Dissolved

Casal di Principe had its elected council dissolved for mafia infiltration in 1991, again in 1996 and again in 2012. This map places all 336 such cases: town councils, provinces and health authorities, each with the dates of every dissolution and its population. Africo’s first dissolution, in 2003, was annulled, and two more followed. The points cluster in Calabria, Campania, Sicily and Puglia. Health authorities are on the list too: the one in Reggio Calabria was taken over in 2008 and again in 2019.

Objects

336336 points

Countries

Italy

Made with

Google My Maps
Old Locomotive Map: Where Italy's Steam Engines Ended Up

Locomotive 640.021 stands at the old mouth of the Fréjus tunnel in Modane, and 625.012 stands in the Fiabilandia theme park in Rimini. This map tracks 447 retired Italian railway vehicles by number. Many were plinthed outside stations or barracks, but the best entries are the odd new homes. A railcar is a coffee bar in Rodano. Two engines stand at a hotel restaurant in Gemona. A 1931 carriage serves as a pizzeria near Rovigo and another as a restaurant called “Fermata Facoltativa”, request stop. Separate layers list rolling stock rusting in sidings and the spots where an engine was removed.

Objects

447447 points

Countries

ItalySloveniaFranceand 1 more

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Google My Maps
Tornado Map Italy: 909 Twisters Since 2014

Italy gets tornadoes, and this archive logs 909 of them since 2014. Each has a date, the time to within half an hour, the town and an F-scale rating, with links to the videos and photos it rests on. Most are F0: waterspouts making landfall on the Ligurian and Apulian coasts, and landspouts over the plains. The strongest is an F4 at Dolo, near Venice, on 8 July 2015. One layer per year shows the season come round again.

Objects

909909 points

Countries

Italy

Made with

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Cennina UFO Map: One Tuscan Village in 1954

On the morning of 1 November 1954 Rosa Lotti, on her way to church in Cennina, said she met a spindle-shaped craft and two small humanoids who took her carnations and stockings. A Japanese UFO researcher reconstructed that day on this map. They plotted her house, her likely path and two candidate spots for the encounter, keeping the second “just in case”. Then come the other witnesses with times and flight paths: a stonemason at 6:10 saw an “intensely bright rocket”, and a father and son in a truck saw a red cone trailing smoke toward Siena. The village priests saw the same shape that evening.

Objects

2017 points, 3 lines

Countries

Italy

Made with

Google My Maps
Nuclear Waste Map Italy: The 51 Candidate Areas

Italy has no permanent store for its radioactive waste, and this map draws the areas judged suitable for one. Fifty-four shapes from the national map of suitable areas fall in Piedmont, upper Lazio, Basilicata, Sardinia and Sicily. Beside them stand Italy’s nine nuclear sites, from the old plant at Trino to the research centre at Ispra, and 21 repositories abroad for comparison.

Objects

8430 points, 54 areas

Countries

ItalyAustraliaBelgiumand 19 more

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OpenStreetMap uMap
Ossuary and Mummy Map: Italy's Places of the Dead

Naples alone fills a corner of this map. It has the Fontanelle cemetery with its skulls, the 366 Fosse, a pauper’s cemetery with one pit for each day of the year, and Purgatorio ad Arco. Written in Russian, the map collects 312 places of the Italian dead: the Capuchin catacombs of Palermo, the mummies of Ferentillo and Oria, the bone chapel of San Bernardino alle Ossa in Milan, the crypt of the Sacconi Rossi in Rome, the old Protestant cemeteries. Most notes are practical: opening hours, the €3 ticket at Ferentillo, the metro stop for Staglieno.

Objects

312312 points

Countries

ItalyMaltaFrance

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Google My Maps
Cold War Bunker Map: Sherman Turrets on the Tagliamento

After the war Italy dug American tank turrets into the riverbanks of the Tagliamento as fixed bunkers against an attack from the east. A Czech fort hunter mapped what is left in 23 entries. At Pinzano a Sherman turret, two “Panzernests”, a cave position and an observation bell survive. San Michele al Tagliamento keeps another Sherman turret. At Sompcornino an M26 tank marks an entrance to the underground works. Elsewhere the notes repeat a single verdict: turrets dismantled.

Objects

2320 points, 3 lines

Countries

Italy

Made with

Google My Maps
Italian Dialect Map: Hear the Cremasco Villages Speak

Click Izano and a recording says “La 'àca”, the cow. Each of the 1,005 points in this dialect atlas around Crema is a village’s answer to one numbered question, such as no. 136, “la vacca”, written in phonetic script with an archive.org recording. Offanengo turns “a small piece, a smaller one, a tiny one” into “An tǫ̀ch / an tüchę̀l / an tüchẹlì”. The author, profB, added eight isoglosses where one way of speaking gives way to another, Roman land divisions, historic borders and a layer of the places not yet surveyed.

Objects

1,005964 points, 26 lines, 15 areas

Countries

ItalySwitzerland

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap

Versions

2 other versions
Prison Camp Map: The Story of Campo 65

In 1941 and 1942 Italy built Campo 65 between Altamura and Gravina for up to 12,000 prisoners, on more than 31 hectares watched by eight towers set in a ring. Each of the 16 points here tells one chapter of its archaeology: the barracks, a kitchen in use only briefly, the water tower, the hunt for food parcels. In barrack E6 survive dry paintings of maps from the camp’s brief use as a partisan training ground. After the war it housed refugees from the Julian March and Dalmatia.

Objects

1616 points

Countries

Italy

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap
Ghost Towns Map Tuscany: Sunk, Collapsed, Died Twice

Fabbriche di Careggine lies at the bottom of Lake Vagli and comes back into view when the lake is drained. Castelnuovo dei Sabbioni was abandoned in the 1960s after lignite mining made the ground give way, and it now houses a mining museum. Buriano “died twice”: a hotel built in 1986 to bring it back lasted about ten years. This short English guide to Tuscany’s ghost villages also has Rocca San Silvestro, a village of miners and smelters left in the 14th century, and the almost intact Poggio Santa Cecilia.

Objects

1010 points

Countries

Italy

Made with

Google My Maps
Vesuvius Evacuation Map: Your Street's Hour to Leave

If Vesuvius stirs, each census block in the red zone has its own exit gate and an hour slot to drive out. This map draws them as 168 shapes from the civil protection plan. One block gets “Centro direzionale, ex SS162 west” between hours 3 and 4, its neighbour Via Argine between hours 34 and 35. The slots run past hour 45. Seventeen blocks are marked “not to be evacuated, no population”. The red and yellow zones frame them.

Objects

168168 areas

Countries

Italy

Made with

Google My Maps

Versions

1 other version
Italian Film Location Map: 360 Scenes and Their Cars

“Catania 1961: Divorzio all’italiana” is pinned on the cathedral square, and its link leads to the 1949 Fiat seen in the shot. This map of 360 film locations comes from a fan of movie cars. Nearly every pin links the film and its vehicle on the Internet Movie Cars Database: the Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider on Piazza Navona in The Talented Mr. Ripley, a 1936 Fiat in Trastevere in Hudson Hawk, a Fiat 128 estate on the Naviglio Grande in the 1974 thriller Milano odia.

Objects

360360 points

Countries

ItalySwitzerlandPolandand 4 more

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Google My Maps
Sicilian Mafia Map: Mandamenti and Their Families

Cosa Nostra divides Sicily into mandamenti, districts that each group several families, and this map draws that structure on the island. The Trabia mandamento takes in the families of Caccamo, Cerda, Ciminna, Termini Imerese and more. Alcamo holds Calatafimi and Castellammare del Golfo, and Palermo’s Noce district has three families of its own. The east of the island is drawn by clan instead: the Cappello group from Calatabiano to Portopalo, the Bottaro-Attanasio in southern Siracusa and Ortigia.

Objects

7977 points, 2 areas

Countries

Italy

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap

Versions

1 other version
Underground Rome Map: Quarries, Catacombs and Sinkholes

The only known way into the old quarry tunnels under Villa de Sanctis is a hole left by a collapse, with a rope ladder down. Under one district east of the centre, this map pins 72 such spots: forgotten catacombs beside the railway, mushroom farms in pozzolana quarries at Tor Fiscale, and a stretch of the Rome–Fiuggi line that went underground in 1941. One tunnel entrance carries the note “marijuana plantation”. A second layer logs the sinkholes and subsidence these voids cause. One cavity turned up during work on a supermarket.

Objects

7251 points, 2 lines, 19 areas

Countries

Italy

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Google My Maps
Calabria Mysteries Map: Grail, Alaric and Shakespeare

“William Shakespeare was from Bagnara Calabra”, the first pin claims, and gives his real name as Michelangelo Florio Crollalanza. This small map of Calabria’s esoteric legends keeps that tone for 18 places. A boulder called Pietra Cappa, like an Egyptian sphinx, is said to be where Wolfram von Eschenbach set the revelation of the Grail. King Alaric was buried with Rome’s treasure in the bed of the Crati. Lilies carved on the Sambucina church portal look just like the emblem of the Priory of Sion. The landscape behind the Mona Lisa is said to be the valley of the Noce.

Objects

1818 points

Countries

Italy

Made with

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Etruscan Roads Map: The Vie Cave of Pitigliano and Sorano

The Etruscans cut roads deep into the tuff of southern Tuscany, and this map draws 11 of these vie cave as lines. The walls of the Via Cava di San Sebastiano rise up to 25 metres and carry carved symbols, a phallus among them, and Christian hermits later moved into its tombs. The Via Cava di San Rocco was the only link between Sorano and Sovana until a bridge was built in 1936. Along Poggio Felceto, burial chambers of the 7th and 6th centuries BC open in the walls.

Objects

1313 lines

Countries

Italy

Made with

Google My Maps

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