The first thematic exhibition of the Cerruti Collection’s precious book collection, curated by Luca Cena (Turin, 1985), antiquarian bookseller and co-founder in 2019 of White Lands Rare Books, a cultural space specialising in rare books, first editions, maps and antique prints. A widely followed populariser, Cena presents at Villa Cerruti a selection of atlases and travel books from the 16th to the 18th centuries, arranged across seven rooms of the house museum. 

A series of masterpieces from the Collection – including Abraham Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1601), Willem and Joan Blaeu’s Atlas Maior (1662–65) and Andreas Cellarius’s Harmonia macrocosmica (1661) – is on display for the first time within the Villa, marking out a route that winds through the rooms like the stages of a mental journey. The exhibition transforms the Villa into an ‘inner globe’, where the geographical book becomes an instrument of knowledge and imagination, capable of exploring the world whilst remaining within the intimate confines of the residence.