Florentine merchants in the late fourteenth century began extending insurance contracts to cover overland cargo and goods in warehouses, expanding the concept of indemnity beyond maritime risks for the first time.

The mercantile culture of late medieval Florence — the city of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio — was deeply entangled with commercial risk; the extension of insurance to overland trade reflects the same expansive material ambition that characterised its literary renaissance.