MILAN— A state maritime museum in Christopher Columbus’ birthplace of Genoa is challenging a Florence library to be the custodian of the recently returned 1493 letter in which the explorer described his voyages to Spanish royals.

Maria Paola Profumo, the director of the Galata Sea Museum, told The Associated Press on Friday she wants to put the letter on display in a room with other important Columbus artifacts, including an urn with his ashes, where it can be both protected and on public view, not left out of sight in a library.

Profumo made her request, with the backing of city officials, in a letter Thursday to Culture Minister Dario Franceschini. The minister said at a ceremony announcing the letter’s return from the United States that the document would be returned to the Riccardiana library in Florence, which was its home before it was replaced with a forgery.

‘’For them it is one of many documents. They don’t have a specific mission focusing on Columbus and the discovery of America,” Profumo said. “The wonder of this document should not be in an archive, but on view, well-preserved and well-conserved and well-shared.”

The Galata’s Columbus collection includes the Code of Privileges issued to Columbus by King Fernando and Queen Isabel implementing the voyage, the famous Columbus portrait by Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio as well as Juan de la Cosa’s first chart of the new world and the urn containing Columbus ashes donated by Santo Domingo, where his body was found.

The 1493 letter is one of some 30 authentic period copies of a letter that Columbus wrote on his return voyage. The Spanishlanguage original hand-written letter was almost immediately reprinted in Latin by a Roman printer.

No one knows exactly when the original letter belonging to the Riccardiana disappeared from Italy, but Florence library’s director, Fulvio Stacchetti, speculated that the switch may have taken place when it was on loan to Italy’s national library in Rome in 1950-51. The forgery was discovered as a result of a 2012 investigation.