Pigafetta was wounded on
Mactan in the Philippines, where Magellan was killed. Nevertheless, he recovered and was among the 17 who accompanied
Juan Sebastián Elcano on board the
Victoria, on the return voyage to Spain.
Upon reaching port in
Sanlúcar de Barrameda (
Province of Cadiz) in September of 1522, three years after his departure, Pigafetta returned to Italy. He related his experiences in
Relazione del Primo Viaggio Intorno Al Mondo (Report on the First Voyage Around the World), which was composed in
Italian. Although parts were published in
Paris in
1525, the manuscript was not published in its entirety until the late eighteenth century. The original document, regrettably, was not preserved.
It was not through Antonio Pigafetta's writings that Europeans learned of the first circumnavigation of the globe. Rather, it was through an account written by
Maximilianus Transylvanus, which was published in
1523. Transylvanus had been instructed to interview the survivors of the voyage when Magellan’s surviving ship
Victoria returned to Spain in September 1522.
After Magellan's voyage, Pigafetta utilized the connections he had made prior to the voyage with the Knights of Rhodes to himself achieve membership in the order. He died in his native city, Vicenza, in
1534.
