The beginning of Italy’s contributions to late medieval travel literature was contemporary to a broader cultural awakening taking place throughout the peninsula that would initially peak between the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century. Thus, after having been absent for several centuries from the annals of pilgrimage literature, the first Italian pilgrimage book, the Florentine Dominican Ricoldo da Montecroce’s Liber Peregrinacionis or Itinerarium represented an original and innovative contribution to travel literature. Italian contributions during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries will continue to be distinctive and often of a broader European and/or world literary impact across multiple genres. These include Marco Polo’s Description of the World, Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s Libro d’Oltramare, contributions of Italian humanists such as Petrarch and Boccccio to travel literature, and the Italian literature of the discovery and exploration that culminated in the Venetian Giovanni Battista Ramusio’s Navigationi et viaggi.