The archival holding of the Royal General Staff Corps preserves the records produced during the first systematic campaign of measurement, triangulation and cartographic representation of the territory of Sardinia. The campaign was promoted by the House of Savoy in the first half of the nineteenth century.

The surveying activity was aimed at creating the island’s first modern land registry and at defining the boundaries between State, municipal and private property. The systematic survey and mapping of the territory resulted in the production of topographical maps, planimetric maps, composite sheets, map sheets, reports and official records.

The archival holdings are organised in two main series:

• the Maps, which bring together cartographic documentation relating to the surveyed municipalities;
• the Official records, which preserve the technical and administrative documentation produced during field operations, checks and annotations on boundaries.

These records make it possible to read the land and territorial structure of Sardinia before the transformations of the contemporary period. The archival holdings also include documentation produced after Italian unification, relating to disputes over ademprivili lands – the old common‑use lands whose legal definition remained controversial for a long time. For these reasons, the archival holding is of particular interest for the history of cartography, historical geography and territorial administration. It also offers valuable insights into common-use rights and agrarian transformation in Sardinia.