Petrarca e Boccaccio in viaggio per la Mitteleuropa

The regions today part of the so-called Mitteleuropa have held, over the centuries XIII-XV, great political importance in the context of the international chessboard on which the Italian States especially and also the State of the Church moved. Francesco Petrarca and Giovanni Boccaccio, two intellectuals strongly, albeit to varying degrees, involved in the politics of the time, were sometimes called to take a principal part in events of international politics. Travel, real or imaginary, physically occurring or simply described in literary fiction, also because of complex odeporical inheritance of Dante’s Poem, take on a particular importance in the works of the two poets: we think of the remarkable presence of travel as narrative gimmick and motif in the Decameron, or to the work of geographical erudition De fontibus montibus, silvis, or journeydescriptions of Petrarca (Itinerarium breve de Ierusalem et Ianua usque ad Terram Sanctam) and to its numerous diplomatic missions, and we can fully appreciate both the fascination exerted by travel, by geographic knowledge on these poets, in their attention to the description of the places, people, sometimes even of customs, which – along with other outstanding examples, including Marco Polo’s Milione – in turn fascinated travellers for centuries.