In setting out to explain the etymological origin of ‘Holland’ in the discussion of the county in his 1567 Descrittione dei tutti Paesi Bassi, the Italian writer and merchant Lodovico Guicciardini considered two alternative explanations. It was generally believed that the place name derived from the Old Dutch term Holtlandia, meaning ‘woodland’, because in ancient times the land had been forested, an explanation that is still accepted in modern scholarship. However, since Holland was almost completely deforested by the sixteenth century, Guicciardini believed a second explanation to be more likely, which traced name to the contraction ‘hol’ and ‘land’, meaning literally ‘hollow land’. This explanation was substantiated by his own observations, because when travelling through the county he had himself noted how the ground quaked, giving the impression that the subsoil did not have a proper foundation, but actually rested on a bed of water. Although Guicciardini did not consider the difficulties that such marshy conditions posed for building in his discussion of Holland, he did address the topic in his description of Amsterdam. Here, he described the entire city as being supported by a forest of piles, ‘which had been driven into the ground with great force using hoisting devices [argani] and other instruments’. Then, citing an unnamed friend, he asserted that if only visible, this forest would certainly be the most beautiful in the world.