I just found some informations and links to online accessable
maps. The format is ecw and the links are lokking like:
ecwp://ww3.pcn.minambiente.it
<ecwp://ww3.pcn.minambiente.it/Cartografia>I don't know much about the technology, but my questions are:
is there a way to access these maps from GRASS? Is it possible
to download them locally?
Use r.in.gdal; you may need to update to the latest GDAL CVS version. Support
should be pretty damn good as ERMapper is GDAL's primary sponsor. 
see http://www.gdal.org/frmt_ecw.html
Hamish
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