Dr. Anthony Welsh - Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at the University of Victoria, speaking about 17th century Venetian traveller Ambrosia Bembo

I've been working for several years now, on an Italian traveler who came from the city of Venice, who traveled to the Middle East, Iran, and Western India between the years of 1671 and 1675. His name was Ambrosia Bembo, and he came from a very famous Venetian family, and he undertook his travels when he was a very young man. He was about 20 years old when he left Venice. Initially he went to visit his uncle who was the Venetian consul in Alepo, in present day Syria. And he spent about a year with him before he decided to undertake what was in those days, an enormous and dangerous journey from Alepo, through southern Turkey, through Iraq, then by boat from Bosphorus to the west coast of India and then back again. I could say a few words about his travels - In India he spent most of his time at institutions, at mission houses operated by Christian missionaries in western India. So his travels are in that regard a tremendous source of information about one of the major classes of travelers, namely missionaries in the 17th century. After spending his year on the west coast of India, Bembo returned and traveled through Iran, and spent a number of weeks in 2 major cities, one Shiraz, the other Isfahan, which were filled with some of the greatest architectural treasures in Iranian history. He was very appreciative of the physical beauty of these cities, and in fact provided us with very fine line drawings of these cities, so that we have a much better idea of what they looked like in the 17th century.