Portolan:
Portolan charts are nautical charts, first made in the 13th century in the Mediterranean basin and later expanded to include other regions. The word portolan comes from the Italian portolano, meaning “related to ports or harbors“, and which since at least the 17th century designates “a collection of sailing directions”. [Wikipedia]
A bit of a foreign import into the English language, which I’ve not seen before. Noted in “The Pizzigano Portolan: A Cartographic Mystery at the James Ford Bell Library,” Dr. Marguerite Ragnow, UMN Libraries:
Hand-painted on a single piece of parchment, Pizzigano’s map is what we call a portolan chart: a manuscript map that emphasizes the sea and the ports of call that dot the surrounding coastline. As Tony Campbell, former Map Librarian of the British Library, once put it: “portolan charts preserve the Mediterranean sailors’ firsthand experience of their own sea, as well as their expanding knowledge of the Atlantic Ocean.” The word “portolan” derives from the Italian word “portolano,” a collection of written sailing directions. These texts list places, with distances and directions to reach them. For example, the James Ford Bell Library has a fourteenth-century Italian Portolano del Adriatico e Mediterra, which gives sailing directions from Constantinople to Lisbon, from the Adriatic Sea through the Mediterranean (Bell call #: 1300 Po).
Samples and discussion of the subject portolan provided at the link. If you enjoy mysteries, this might be fun.
