While it does not bear any trace of its past owners, in all probability the English version of the Itinerarium Italiae by the Belgian Franz Schott (1548–1622), often Italianised as Francesco Scoto, accompanied several people across the Italian peninsula. Published for the first time in Latin in Antwerp for the Jubilee of 1600, the book constitutes the first attempt to organise within a systematic guide to Italy both information relating to itineraries, routes and distances, as well as to facts and curiosities about history, art, and the habits and customs of the cities it covered. Additionally, it contained plans of cities and views of monuments.
The volume became a prototype for many other travel publications and was extraordinarily successful, as demonstrated by its many editions, which stretched into 1761, and its translation into French, Italian and English, like the example donated to the museum, which was published in London by the printer Griffin in 1660. The guide directs the visitor across continental Italy, paying special attention to the city of Rome, before continuing on to Sicily and Malta.
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