In July 1520 Dürer, with his wife Agnes and their maid, set off from Nuremberg for the Netherlands, where they remained for a year. The pretext for the journey was to attend the coronation of the Emperor Charles V at Aachen (seen above, in a sketch by Dürer), to ensure the renewal of his Imperial pension. It was also a business trip: Dürer took with him many of his prints for sale. Surely, though, it was above all an excuse for the 49 year-old artist to travel once more. Basing himself in Antwerp, the most cosmopolitan, modern city in Europe and the centre of a new, global trade, Dürer travelled extensively, indulging his tireless curiosity and his hunger for new sights. He was amazed by the wealth and sophistication of the Netherlandish towns, and by what he saw there, from locally-produced artworks to recently imported Aztec treasures. Like a celebrity, he was feted by local artists and met the great and the good, including Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands, and Erasmus. He recorded his experiences in a diary and made drawings of the places he saw and the people he met, leaving us a vivid account of this, his last Wanderjahre.