2 euro San Marino 2006 – 500 years since the death of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus (1451 – May 20, 1506) was an Italian navigator, colonizer, and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to a common European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere. Columbus, although not the first to reach the Americas from Afro-Eurasia, marked the beginning of widespread contact between Europeans and Native Americans.