Travelling, descriptions, and representations. Egypt between the late XIV and the XVI century

Travelling, namely departing from the place where one's certainties lie, corresponds to the need to reify the places of one's everyday actions and life, to recognize and re-elaborate them from a cultural as well as a material viewpoint. That is, to recognize oneself in a place else which has been mythicized, dreamed of, longed for. We also need to explore "other" places, to connect our own truths and certainties with the unknown and the territo- rial "emptiness". In other words, we need to expand our knowledge and to experience new geographic realities. The passage from one dimension to another - from the known to the unknown, from the familiar to the uncertain - has always characterized human societies. an almost uninterrupted genre which has collected the memories of numerous Italian travellers as they "walked" towards the East, whose stories have sparked curiosity and stimulated the European courts, triggering an actual cultural revolution, especially in the light of other travels which were the stage for the chronicles of XV and XVI century great explorations. The travel stories and travellers to Egypt and the Middle East can be addressed, however, only if the phenomenon will be considered in a wider historical framework, that allows to understand the relationships between Egypt and European domains during the Mamluk Empire, with a particular attention to the events of XV century. This historical phase is very important because it puts forward following tensions, which in turn also invest the journey and its modalities.