We mapped Marco Rossi's route on ExploreMap, stop by stop. He's the hero of Edmondo De Amicis' Dagli Appennini alle Ande ("From the Apennines to the Andes"), the best-loved story in his 1886 novel Cuore. Marco leaves Genoa alone, chasing a mother who stopped writing home from Argentina.
He boards an emigrant ship in Genoa, crosses the Mediterranean, and passes Gibraltar. Six weeks on the open Atlantic follow. The ship calls at Rio de Janeiro, then sails up the Río de la Plata to Buenos Aires. A false lead sends him out to Bahía Blanca and back. From there: a riverboat to Rosario, a train toward Córdoba, a freight car ridden in secret. He crosses the Salinas Grandes salt flats with a band of traveling Roma. Then he walks the last stretch into San Miguel de Tucumán, exhausted, but in time to find his mother.
Every stop carries its own date and note, the same way a real trip does in ExploreMap. The trip runs from Genoa in 1882 to Genoa again in 1883. Ferry and car legs also follow real routes now, not straight lines — Marco's Atlantic crossing curves along real shipping lanes instead of cutting straight across the map. A runaway migration story from the 1880s turns out to fit the same shape as any modern itinerary: a line of places, in order, each with something that happened there.
You can explore the full route, in order, here: From the Apennines to the Andes .
Want to map your own journey, real or imagined? Start free on ExploreMap.