At the end of the 17th century, H. Purcell writes the admirable Dido and Aeneas. Around the twenties of the same century, G. L. Bernini sculpts the virtuosic group of Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius. For the nascent studies of historical cartography, the 16th century had already closed in the name of Aeneas’ journey, whose stops had been fixed in the tabula included by A. Ortelius in the 1595 edition of the Parergon to his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. The present paper takes a short journey on the Aeneas’ route: a journey that, across poetry, iconography, historiography and historical geography, leads Aeneas back from the Baroque to Vergil. This paper emphasizes the paradigmatic meaning that the Romans assigned to the theme of Aeneas’ journey, as a great metaphor for their own history. 
Keyword: Aeneas’ journey, hospitium, humanitas, Leopardi, Ortelius (Abraham), Sallustius, Vergil.