The Florentine nobleman Leonardo Frescobaldi (fl. 1384 1405) travelled with two compatriots, and at the urging of the king of Naples, to the Holy Land in 1384 5, and he wrote this account on his return. It was published in 1818 by the librarian of the Barberini Library in Rome, Guglielmo Manzi (1784 1821), who prefixed to his edition an essay (also in Italian) on the activities of Italian merchants abroad in the fourteenth century. Frescobaldi and his companions went first to Venice, whence they sailed to Alexandria in Egypt, in order to visit St Catharine's monastery on the way to Jerusalem....