Cristoforo Buondelmonti

Who was Cristoforo Buondelmonti?

Cristoforo Buondelmonti was an Italian monk and traveler, and a pioneer in promoting first-hand knowledge of Greece and its antiquities throughout the Western world.

He left his native city of Florence around 1414 in order to travel, mainly in the Greek islands. He visited Constantinople in the 1420s. He is the author of two historical-geographic works: the Descriptio insulae Cretae and the Liber insularum Archipelagi. These two books are a combination of geographical information and contemporary charts and sailing directions. The last one contains the oldest surviving map of Constantinople, and the only one which antedates the Ottoman conquest of the city in 1453.

He died c. 1430.