Christopher Columbus' Lost Stolen Letter Finally Returned to Italy
Exciting news, "Christopher Columbus' lost letter because it was stolen, finally returned to Italy". It was announced by the federal agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), that "the United States has returned a rare letter from the 15th century written by Christopher Columbus to Italy."
The letter, worth more than $1.3 million, was revealed to have been stolen between 1985 and 1988, most likely from the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice's historic public library.
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| One of 30 known surviving first editions of a letter written by Columbus to the Spanish monarchs has returned to Italy (Photo: Emanuele Antonio Minerva for the Ministry of Culture) |
The letter was discovered by US federal investigators in 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware, with help from the Delaware US attorney's office.
The letter is owned by a private collector from Texas
The letter was owned by a private collector from Texas, who said he got it in 2003 from a rare book dealer.
The collector voluntarily handed over the letter. Ice's deputy director and senior acting director, Patrick J Lechleitner, traveled to Rome on July 19 to deliver the original letter to Italian officials.
"It is a pleasure to be here to celebrate the return of this important artifact to its rightful owner, the Italian people, and I would like to commend our attaché's office in Rome for the excellent cooperation with our international colleagues, as well as HSI Wilmington for their hard work in identifying, tracking, recovering and restoring Columbus' collection of letters."
The letter, officially referred to as the Plannck I Columbus letter, named after printer Stephan Plannck, who published some of his letters, is one of the first 30 extant editions of Columbus' letter.
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| After Columbus wrote the letter in 1493, it was reprinted in Latin and circulated across Europe. Several copies have resurfaced in the U.S., including this one stolen from Venice in the 1980s (Photo: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) |
Columbus announced his discovery of the Americas to members of the Spanish royal family, a statement that many experts say is inaccurate.
The National Museum of the American Indian in New York says Columbus was not the first foreign explorer to land in the Americas.
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"Neither he nor the people who came before him found America because the natives have inhabited the western hemisphere for tens of thousands of years. Contact with Europeans resulted in loss of life, disruption of traditions, and enormous loss of land for indigenous peoples in the Americas," he said.
In this version of the letter printed in Latin, Columbus wrote about his findings from America in March 1493 to King Ferdinand, who along with Queen Isabella helped finance his voyage.
This is the fourth original edition of this letter stolen over the past few decades. Paul Needham, a rare book expert and former librarian at Princeton University, approached U.S. officials when he tracked down the missing letter.
Hopefully, this news will encourage all parties, especially related parties. That's a little information about "Christopher Columbus' stolen letters, finally returned to Italy", and hopefully useful.