It was stolen many years in the past from the Marciana Library in Venice and situated in Texas (USA). It is among the few letters to the Catholic Monarchs that Columbus despatched upon his arrival within the New World
Eight pages in Latin written by Christopher Columbus himself. In that letter he advised the Catholic Monarchs, Isabel and Fernando, his impressions on his first journey to what later grew to become generally known as America.
That letter has returned to Italy right this moment. Decades in the past it was stolen from the Marciana Library in Venice and was not too long ago situated within the residence of a collector in Texas (United States).
The incunabula, with out unique date however printed in 1493 in Rome by Stephan Plannck, consists of 8 pages written in Latin below the title “de Insulis Indiae supera Gangem nuper inventis” (“Of the not too long ago found islands of India on the Ganges”) and narrates the occasions that occurred throughout the journey to America and the primary impressions made by these lands and their inhabitants.
Columbus thought he was in India
In these letters, Columbus describes the experiences he lived from the second he started the expedition from Cabo de Palos, on August 3, 1492, in addition to what occurred within the seven subsequent months throughout his seek for the Indies.
His narration, by which he all the time maintains that he has arrived within the East Indies, ends along with his arrival in Lisbon on March 4, 1493. “Not solely will we wish to restore it to the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, we wish to inaugurate an exhibition across the doc that inform its content material and produce vacationers and residents nearer to the determine of Columbus,” the Italian Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano, advised EFE.
The collector returned it when he came upon that the letter was stolen.
The return of the letter was celebrated with an occasion attended by US diplomats. It is a doc of huge historic and documentary worth of which solely 16 copies are preserved distributed in libraries world wide, particularly in Spain and Italy, the place a number of of those letters had beforehand been stolen, situated primarily within the US.
According to the Italian Government, this letter was particularly stolen from the Biblioteca Nacional Marciana in Venice earlier than 1988 and might be discovered because of the collaboration of the US authorities.
Specifically, it was within the arms of a collector from Dallas (USA), who acquired it in good religion and didn’t oppose the confiscation ordered by the Philadelphia Prosecutor’s Office after studying of the unlawful origin of the property.
“Italy and the US keep a robust partnership, particularly on regulation enforcement points, from the investigation of drug trafficking and the disruption of cash laundering networks to the combat in opposition to cybercrime, the disruption of organized crime and the safety of cultural heritage,” stated Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Patrick J. Lechleitner.
Already in 2016, after an investigation coordinated by the Rome Prosecutor’s Office, one other copy of the Columbus letter stolen from the Riccardiana Library in Florence returned to Italy and was changed by a forgery. Also in Spain, the US authorities delivered one other copy in 2018 that It was stolen between 2004 and 2005 from the Library of Catalonia in Barcelona.
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