Antonio Pigafetta

Antonio Pigafetta was a Venetian scholar and traveler, born in Vicenza around 1491. He joined Ferdinand Magellan’s Spanish-backed expedition, which set out in 1519 to find a westward route to the Spice Islands. Pigafetta served as a close observer and kept a detailed account of the voyage; he was among the small number of the original crew who returned to Spain in 1522. His writing is an important firsthand record of the expedition and the first circumnavigation of the globe. It also belongs to the tradition of Renaissance travel writing, in which close observation of unfamiliar places and peoples helped readers imagine a wider world.

Pigafetta’s best-known work is his account of the voyage, commonly titled Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al mondo (“Account of the First Voyage Around the World”). He records the journey’s course, encounters with communities across the Atlantic and Pacific, and the practical hardships of life at sea. His attention to names, customs, foods, languages, and natural phenomena gives the narrative much of its lasting value. The prose is often direct and documentary, though its vivid observations also convey the strangeness and danger of travel beyond familiar European waters. Pigafetta’s account remains a valuable companion to the expedition’s history and to the early European record of the Pacific. If you’re curious about the voyage, his writing offers a way to follow it through the eyes of one of its participants.