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CYRIACUS OF ANCONA
Cyriacus, also known as Ciriaco de’ Pizzicolli, was an Italian merchant, traveller, and early antiquarian born around 1391.
During his journeys across the Eastern Mediterranean, Cyriacus developed a deep fascination with the remains of the ancient world. He visited archaeological sites, copied inscriptions, sketched monuments, and recorded ruins that were often neglected, damaged, or at risk of disappearing.
By documenting what he encountered firsthand, Cyriacus helped preserve knowledge of classical sites and objects that might otherwise have been lost.
Today, he is often remembered as one of the earliest figures to study ancient remains through direct observation and field documentation. His surviving notes offer valuable glimpses into the landscapes, settlements, and monuments of the Eastern Mediterranean during the 15th century.
FROM CONSTANTINOPLE TO PERINTHUS
25 July 1444
Cyriacus departed Constantinople and travelled westward along the northern coast of the Propontis. Passing through Selymbria, now Silivri, he continued to the ancient city of Perinthus, later known as Heraclea and today as Marmara Ereğlisi.
Although much of the city had already fallen into ruin, Cyriacus found extensive traces of its former importance. He described surviving walls, towers, arches, column bases, fragments of statues, and inscriptions written in Greek and Latin. Among them was a dedication mentioning Antiphilos, son of Samylos, an official associated with sacred athletic games, and Hermes.
Cyriacus was equally struck by what had disappeared. Perinthus had once possessed a celebrated amphitheatre, yet by the time of his visit almost nothing recognisable remained beyond sections of wall and several ancient arches. Local residents identified these fragments as parts of the former structure, preserving through memory what the surviving architecture could no longer fully reveal.
GIFT OF A COIN
While travelling through Perinthus, Cyriacus recorded inscriptions and ancient remains found across the city and its surrounding villages. Among these discoveries was a silver coin bearing the image of the Roman emperor Vespasian.
On 14 August, Cyriacus presented the coin to his friend Raphael Castiglione. He described it as a memorial of their friendship and a precious reminder of the ancient world they both admired.
The gesture offers a small but personal glimpse into Cyriacus’s travels. Antiquities were not only objects for him to study and document. They could also become tokens of friendship, carrying the memory of a place from one traveller to another.
From Perinthus, Cyriacus crossed the Propontis through Proconnesus, now Marmara Island, and continued toward Cyzicus. Near ancient Artace, he encountered broken columns, fragments of statues, and a large marble figure lying among the vineyards.
Cyzicus left an even deeper impression on him. Cyriacus had visited the city approximately seven years earlier, allowing him to compare its condition across two separate journeys. During his first visit, he had seen thirty-one columns still standing. By 1444, he reported that only one remained.
“But alas! How disfigured we found what we had seen twice before within the space of seven years.” — Cyriacus of Ancona, 1444
He described the ancient city as fallen and increasingly diminished, yet still filled with evidence of its former scale. Marble walls, towers, settlements, and monumental remains extended beyond the central ruins, suggesting that the city had once occupied a far greater area than was visible in his own time.
The great temple of Cyzicus received his closest attention. Cyriacus measured its walls, counted its columns, recorded the spacing between them, and attempted to reconstruct the arrangement of its entrances, walkways, and interior spaces. His description suggests a monumental structure surrounded by broad colonnades, with more than sixty columns forming part of its design.
Together, these accounts reveal more than the route of a Renaissance traveller. They capture a landscape in transition, where the ancient cities of the Marmara region remained visible through scattered monuments, surviving inscriptions, local memory, and ruins that were disappearing even within Cyriacus’s own lifetime.
Cyriacus’s Route Through the Propontis
Byzantium
Cyriacus departed aboard a royal trireme commanded by Alexius Disypatos.
Proconnesus
He encountered the island’s immense marble quarries, cut stone along the shoreline, and a large rock-cut cavern bearing an inscription.
The Hellespont
He passed the European and Asian shores of the strait, recording ancient towns including Lysimachia, Callipolis, Sestos, Abydos, and Sigeion.
Tenedos and Imbros
He continued to Imbros, where he documented ancient walls, harbour stones, statue fragments, column bases, and inscriptions.
Beyond the Marmara
From there, Cyriacus continued deeper into the northern Aegean.
WHY CYRIACUS MATTERS
Cyriacus’s journey offers a rare glimpse of the Marmara region in the mid-15th century, at a moment when ancient cities, Byzantine authority, local communities, and changing political powers still existed side by side.
His accounts reveal a landscape deeply shaped by Greek and Roman history. Inscriptions, temples, imperial monuments, marble architecture, and coins remained visible across the region, even as many of these sites were already damaged or disappearing. The presence of Byzantine officials, governors, ports, ships, and fortified settlements also shows that the Marmara was still an active political and maritime world, not simply a collection of abandoned ruins.
Cyriacus’s travels also remind us that history survives through people. Local residents helped identify lost monuments. Friends exchanged knowledge, routes, hospitality, and objects. A silver coin became a gift of friendship, while copied inscriptions carried the memory of places beyond the stones themselves.
Most importantly, his journey presents the Sea of Marmara as a connected cultural corridor. Byzantium, Perinthus, Proconnesus, Cyzicus, and the Hellespont were linked by movement across the water. The sea connected islands, cities, empires, and individuals, making Marmara not the edge of history, but one of its meeting places.
Through Cyriacus’s eyes, we see a region where the ancient world had not fully vanished. It remained present in ruined temples, marble quarries, old names, local memory, political life, and the relationships formed along the journey.