Codazzi was born in the Italian city of
Lugo, then in the
Papal States and a few years later part of the
Cisalpine Republic. From a young age, he appreciated the ideals of the
French Revolution and, after his studies at the military academy
Scuola di Artiglieria (Artillery School) of
Pavia, actively served in the
Napoleonic Army. With the
defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, Codazzi moved away from Italy and after some travels went to Venezuela, where he offered his military knowledge to
Simón Bolívar and
his army. Successively he received the task of mapping the area of the
Maracaibo Lake and the borders between Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador. The Venezuelan government named him Colonel and ordered the creation of an Atlas of Venezuela, a task that gave him international fame – in Paris, Codazzi was awarded in 1842 the
Legion of Honor by the King of France
Louis Philippe I, on behalf of the
French Academy of Sciences. Codazzi meanwhile took the Venezuelan citizenship from president
José Antonio Páez and became Governor of
Barinas, a region of southwestern Venezuela. In those years his academic activity of geographer was continuously interrupted by his duties as a military commander, suffocating many revolts. Codazzi even promoted the creation in the 1840s of the
Colonia Tovar, a small German settlement in the Venezuelan central mountains that still exists today and has become one of the main tourist attractions near
Maracay. With the fall of Páez, after a military insurrection, Codazzi was forced to escape to
Cúcuta (Colombia), where he continued his geographic and mapping activity with military duties for the Colombian government. In 1852 Codazzi did a scientific and cartographic inspection of Panama for the British government: in 1854, even if with no official mention of Codazzi's work, the
Panama Canal project was done following exactly his indications and route. Codazzi died of
malaria in February 1859 at the small town of
Espíritu Santo in the Colombian mountains, in the arms of his friend
Manuel María Paz, while he was mapping the area for the
Comisión Corográfica. The town where he died has been renamed
Aldea Codazzi, and now is a city with a population of nearly 70,000 inhabitants. Venezuela honored the memory of Codazzi placing his remains inside the
National Pantheon of Venezuela in 1942, where he is considered one the Heroes of Venezuela.
Instituto Geográfico Agustin Codazzi, Colombia's national geographical and cartographical institute, is named after him. ==Works==