Compasso da navigare (Mediterranean written sailing directions)
Compasso da navigare (derrotero escrito del Mediterráneo)
- Date
- c. 1250 · confidence medium
- Place
- Pisa, Tuscany, Italy
- Credited to
- Anonymous author, probably an Italian pilot
- Field
- Movement
What it is
The oldest known written sailing directions in a Romance language, giving courses, distances, depths and harbours of the whole Mediterranean and Black Sea. It gathers the information later drawn on portolan charts.
The work is anonymous and its place of composition is uncertain; the text survives in later copies.
What it led to
- written Mediterranean pilotage for mariners
- the textual basis of portolan charts
- a model for later rutters