The Mongol Empire became a chief destination for European travellers in a very specific moment of the medieval period, roughly framed by two events: Ögedei Khan’s European campaign of 1240–1241, and the formal fall of the last Yuan Mongolian emperor in 1368, which marked the takeover of the Chinese Ming dynasty and the opening of a new social and political paradigm in Asia. Between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Mongol rule brought about an unprecedented geopolitical stability across Eurasia, traditionally referred to by historians as Pax Mongolica. The general safety of the roads and the relatively smooth administrative system of the Mongol khanates allowed for a productive period of economic and cultural interconnections between Europe and the Far East, whose protagonists were traders, diplomats, missionaries, and adventurers. While merchants exploited the safety of the Silk Road to reach territories both within and beyond the Mongol area, the Mongol Empire was the express destination of several diplomatic and missionary expeditions, carried out by Franciscan and Dominican friars.

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.