Introduction of the Tomato to the Old World

Timeline

1. 1519–1521Valley of Mexico · MexicoTomatoes were already cultivated in Mesoamerica as food and garden crops. After Cortés's expedition captured Tenochtitlan, the Spanish gained systematic access to tomato varieties of the Valley of Mexico, creating the conditions for seeds to be carried back to Iberia via Atlantic routes.
2. 1520–1540Seville–Naples route · SpainTomato seeds entered gardens in Seville and elsewhere aboard Spanish returning fleets, then were brought to the Italian peninsula by Italian merchants active under Spanish and Portuguese flags. By the 1540s Italian noble gardens could trial-grow them; the fruit was flat, lobed, golden when ripe or turning red, and still counted as a botanical curiosity rather than a dietary staple.
3. 1544–1554Italian Peninsula · Italian PeninsulaIn 1544 Pietro Andrea Mattioli first described this flat, lobed fruit 'brought into Italy in our time' in his Italian commentary on Dioscorides, noting it could be fried in oil like an eggplant; the 1554 Latin expanded edition called it pomi d'oro and recorded golden and red types. Records of offerings at the Medici court in Florence around the same period mark the tomato's entry into Europe's circles of knowledge and ceremonial consumption.