ISI students were introduced, March 20, to a uniquely Florentine take on the origins of their country. Dr Maurizio Maggini of the Florentine Association for Vespucci was invited to present a short documentary setting out Florence’s role in the mapping of the Americas in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.  The evening came to a dramatic end when students were brought face-to-face with a life-size facsimile reproduction of the first map to use the word ‘America’, a name taken from Amerigo Vespucci, Florentine mapper and navigator extraordinaire.