A rich unpublished documentation and some paintings of the predominantly Florentine and Venetian schools are the basis of the 13 essays that are presented here in chronological order, starting from 1361. These sources allow us to examine different aspects and moments in the history of the carpet in Europe: its employment in the workshop of Florentine and Sienese goldsmiths, importation to England and France, and presence in Florence, both at the Medici Court in the late Renaissance and in the homes of aristocratic families such as the Salviati and the Strozzi. The research also offers new data relating to some important carpets now preserved in Florentine institutions. With the last essay, however, we leave Europe and through the eye of some European observers we follow the carpets that the Shahs of Persia donated to the Ottoman Sultans in the 16th-17th centuries.