The Story of Europe, Map by Map

Activities:

14/06-13/07: Map exhibition, in the lower hall at the Central Public Library in Floriana, during the library’s opening hours

15/06, 10:30: Map workshop with Joseph Schirò – an activity for children aged 8 to 14 (free entrance, register on  events [dot] librarygov [dot] mt (events[dot]library[at]gov[dot]mt))

06/07, 12:30: Suriet l-Ewropa/Shapes of Europe – a poetry writing workshop inspired by maps, with Dr Antoine Cassar (for young people and adults, free entrance).

10/07, 19:00: 12 Maps, One Project: a presentation and discussion on the exhibition with Pedro Santamaría, a writer and the cultural officer at the Spanish Embassy in Malta.

This series of activities is commemorating 20 years since Malta joined the European Union. It’s being organised by the European Commission Representation in Malta, the Embassy of Spain, and Malta Libraries. The map exhibition, Europa, 12 mapas y un proyecto, is an initiative of the Biblioteca Nacional de España. https://www.bne.es/es/agenda/europa-12-mapas-un-proyecto

Europe: 12 maps, one project is an exhibition on a selection of cartographic representations of a space with a certain identity. But what is that identity? What is Europe? A continent? A geographical reality? A political community? All that, and much more.
Europe is the result of a historic process that reaches ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, Christianity, the Enlightenment, the expansion of the West, the world wars and a thousand more events.
Maps, the eyes of history, show us scenes and figures of what its battles, pacts, towns and cities were. Maps are portraits of countries, their territories and their inhabitants. There is no definitive map, much in the same way there is no definitive portrait of someone. Each describes a series of phenomena or tells a succession of facts, but these are not exhaustive.
Maps express what their authors sought in space and how they represented it. They talk about what we were or what we believed to be.