Print depicting a view of Tripoli. Originally engraved by Paolo Forlani. Inscribed with the title ‘Tripoli de Barbaria’ and in the top-left: ‘Il vero disegno del porto della Citta della fortezza, et de sito doue e posta Tripoli di Barbari. Ven. l'anno 1567 / Alla libraria della Colonna’. [Translation: This is a true design of the port, city, fortress, and site where Tripoli di Barbaria is located, from the year 1567. / At the Colonna bookshop.’]

The map was published by Giulio Ballino in ‘Civitatum Aliquot Insigniorum, et locorum, magis munitorum exacta delineatio: Cum omnium quae ad eorum historiam pertinent, breui enarratione. Disegni di alcune piu illustri citta, et fortezze del mondo, con una breue historia delle cose, a loro pertinenti’, printed by B.Zaltieri in 1568.

Tripoli was one of the Barbary States. The Barbary States was a term used for the coastal regions of central and western North Africa or more specifically the Maghreb and the Ottoman borderlands consisting of the regencies in Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, as well as the Sultanate of Morocco from the 16th to 19th centuries.

The Ottoman empire and the Republic of Venice were involved in a series of conflicts, which may be the reason for the map. The Ottoman–Venetian wars were a series of conflicts between the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Venice that started in 1396 and lasted until 1718.