Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti

Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti
Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti
Born	21 May 1855 Pavia
Died	31 May 1926 Pavia
Nationality	Italian
Fields	explorer, geographer and naturalist.

Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti (21 May 1855 – 31 May 1926) was an Italian explorer, geographer, and naturalist.

Robecchi Bricchetti was an illegitimate son of the noble Hercules Robecchi and the young seamstress Teresa Brichetti.

He joined the faculty of Civil Engineering at the University of Pavia in his native city, but he continued his studies at the University of Zurich and graduated in Karlsruhe, Germany.

He was a person of many cultural and scientific interests (ethno-anthropology, geography, geology, zoology, etc.), with an excellent knowledge of languages, including Arabic, which he spoke fluently. He dedicated himself intensively to document and combat widespread slavery in Africa.

A classic nineteenth-century explorer, he returned to Pavia from his travels with a large number of objects and African documents and a Somali boy whom he freed from slavery, and then adopted. He died in Pavia in 1926.

Robecchi Bricchetti spent much of his time in travel to distant lands, in particular Africa. In fact he was the first European to visit extensively the region in the Horn of Africa referred to as Benadir, to which he gave its current name of Somalia.

In 1885 he went to Egypt, and with a small caravan he reached the Oasis of Siwa in the Libyan desert.

In 1888 he left from Zeila in Somalia, crossed the Danakil Desert, and arrived in Harrar in Ethiopia, where he remained several months, gathering scientific findings of various kinds, and taking photographs.

In 1890 he left for a new trip to Somalia for an exploration of the unknown region of Hobyo. During his journey of more than two thousand kilometers he reached Alula and realized a large number of maps and photographs.

Between 1890 and 1891 he explored the unknown territory of Migiurtinia with significant cartographic and ethnographic observations. In 1896 he made a new crossing of the Libyan desert up to the Oasis of Siwa. His last trip to Africa was in 1903.