By: Katelyn Wei

A letter from the 15th century written by Christopher Columbus is finally restored to its original location back in Italy. Many centuries have passed since it disappeared from a Venice library and years after it was discovered in Delaware.

Columbus originally wrote the letter in 1493 which was meant for his patrons, Spain’s Royalties, King Ferdinand, and Queen Isabella, and included description about his discoveries in the Americas. The letter was sent to Rome and was translated into Latin and ended up in many libraries across Europe.

This one specific letter is printed as first edition which makes it the rarest among the copies that have been recently discovered. ICE valued it at more than $1.3 million dollars when it was discovered in 2020.

During its disappearance, people might have been wondering: What happened to the letter? Columbus’ letter was sent to Rome, Stephan Planck, the printer, reprinted it in Latin. He realized that he forgot to add Queen Isabella’s name out of the pamphlet’s introduction, so he reprinted it again later. This is when two different editions were born, known as Plannck 1 and Plannck 2.

The Marciana National Library in Venice got the letter in 1875, according to ICE. It says the letter was stolen at an unknown date. Investigators were determined to find it, so a collector bought the same letter from a rare book dealer in U.S that it would take another 2 decades to bring it back to Italy.

HIS Wilmington received information regarding alleged forgeries of several Latin editions of the Columbus letter in 2011. This left no choice for HSI had to relocate the Plannck 2s stolen from European libraries. One was returned to Florence in 2016 and the rest to Barcelona and Vatican City in 2018.

HSI returned cultural property to more than 15 countries such as France, India, Iraq, Italy, and Mali in fiscal year 2022.