Map of the Strait of Messina: Charybdis and Scylla

This black-and-white print presents a bird's-eye map of the strait separating Sicily (labeled SICILIA) from Calabria. On the left, a personified wind head blows toward the strait. A prominent, shaded diagonal tube labeled 'Canalis subterraneus' runs through the land, connecting the Mediterranean to the vortex of Charybdis near the city of Messina. In the center, Mount Etna is depicted with smoke rising from its peak. To the right, at the narrowest point of the strait, Scylla is marked near the promontory of Pelorum. The composition is structured with topographical labels, lines indicating subterranean currents, and a decorative cartouche in the bottom right corner containing the title.

This print is from Athanasius Kircher's 'Mundus Subterraneus' (1665), a seminal work in early modern natural philosophy that attempted to explain geological phenomena, tides, and volcanoes through a system of subterranean fires and channels.