Description
The cartographic heritage, period instruments and historical documents testify, with their content and representations, to the history and evolution of land ownership and real estate publicity in our region over the last 150 years. The Cadastre and the Land Register are two institutions deeply rooted in the historical and cultural tradition of the Trentino and South Tyrolean populations, institutionally responsible for land management from a cartographic point of view for tax purposes, and from a legal point of view. Established in Austria-Hungary, the Institutes in question are currently managed by the Autonomous Provinces of Trento and Bolzano, within their respective spheres of competence, on the basis of the special Statute of Autonomy and its implementing regulations. The exhibition was set up to meet the need to recover the historical memory of the sector in order to faithfully document the phases of formation and preservation of the Cadastre and Land Book in our Land. The lengthy research and preparation of this exhibition is to be seen, in perspective, as a cultural investment, especially for the benefit of future generations. The cartographic holdings, period instruments and historical documents bear witness, through their content and representations, to the history and development of land ownership and real estate in our region over the last 150 years. It is therefore material of great value, often consulted by cartographers, historians, jurists from public and private institutions, and university students. The exhibition, the only one of its kind in Italy, is divided into three sectors: - the first sector, organised according to traditional exhibition techniques, deals with the formation phase of cadastral cartography: the time span covered ranges from the observation of triangulation networks carried out between 1853 and 1856, to the detailed survey carried out in 1859-1861 and afterwards, to the preservation of the land cadastre, with a display of map sheets, documents, registers, minutes and period instruments. These include no less than two models of the legendary Tavoletta Pretoriana, i.e. the ancient goniograph, which had assisted the Austrian cadastral technicians in the early stages of the formation of the cartographic heritage relating to the territory of the present-day Trentino Adige region. Two wall showcases contain a collection of the Bulletin of Imperial Laws covering the years from 1848 to 1918. - The second sector: the setting of a Land Registry Office from the end of the 19th century. Here, the setting of a late 19th century land registry office has been faithfully reconstructed through the display of original period furniture, including a valuable map cabinet and two desks from Austrian offices. On a table, also from the period, is visible, in perfect working order, a pantograph, an instrument that made it possible to make copies of the map on a larger scale than the ordinary one, and a valuable example of a wire planimeter through which the surface area of cadastral parcels could be calculated for tax purposes. - The third sector: setting of a Land Register Office from the early 20th century. Here too, as seen with regard to the reconstruction of the land registry office, the visitor is offered the possibility of entering a chancellery of the land registry judge where the boar skin-bound volumes of the Land Book were stored and managed. On the original shelves, equipped with a sloping shelf to allow easy reading of the contents of the volumes themselves, the contents of the bound tavolar lots in the original tomes are still visible and consultable. The direct viewing of the original deeds and the numerous historical documents, but also and above all of the tools that the pioneers used in their work almost 150 years ago, makes it possible to retrace the fundamental stages in the birth and development of the cadastre-tabular system, which can be identified in the formation of the cartographic heritage that took place in the years between 1853 and 1861, the determination of land tax revenues in the second half of the 19th century and then in the work on the Land Register that began in the early 20th century and ended in the second half of the 1950s.
