Gemelli Careri

Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri (1651–1725) was a seventeenth-century Italian adventurer and traveler. He was among the first Europeans to tour the world by securing passage on ships involved in the carrying trade; his travels, undertaken for pleasure rather than profit, may have inspired Around the World in Eighty Days. Some suspected him of spying for the Vatican on his journey.

Gemelli Careri was born in Taurianova, 1651, and died in Naples, 1725. He obtained a doctorate in law at the College of Jesuits in Naples. After completing his studies he briefly entered the judiciary. In 1685 he took time off to travel around Europe (France, Spain, Germany, and Hungary). In Hungary he was wounded when an army of Turks besieged Buda.

In 1687 he returned to Naples and re-entered the judiciary. He also began work on his first two books: "Relazione delle Campagne d'Ungheria" (1689) with co-author Matteo Egizio, and "Viaggi in Europa" (1693). At this time Gemelli encountered frustrations with his legal profession. He was denied certain opportunities because he did not have an established aristocratic origin. Eventually, he decided to suspend his career for a round-the-world trip. This five-year trip would lead to his best known six-volume book, Giro Del Mondo (1699).

Gemelli Careri realized that he could finance his trip by carefully purchasing goods at each stage that would have enhanced value at the next stage: at Bandar-Abbas on the Persian Gulf, he asserts, the traveler should pick up "dates, wine, spirits, and all the fruits of Persia, which one carries to India either dried or pickled in vinegar, on which one makes a good profit".

Gemelli Careri started his world trip in 1693, with a visit to Egypt, Constantinople, and the Holy Land. At the time, this Middle Eastern route was already becoming a standard ingredient of any excursion into foreign lands, a hike that was almost not worth writing home about. However, from there the Italian 'tourist' would take less traveled paths. After crossing Armenia and Persia, he visited Southern India and entered China, where the Jesuit missionaries assumed that such an unusual Italian visitor could be a spy working for the pope. This fortuitous misunderstanding opened for Gemelli many of the most tightly closed doors of the country. He got to visit the emperor at Beijing, attended the Lantern Festival celebrations and toured the Great Wall.

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