All evidence indicates that the first tarot decks were created between 1410 and 1430 in either Milan, Ferrera, or Bologna, in northern Italy, when additional trump cards with allegorical illustrations were added to the more common four-suit decks that already existed. These new decks were originally called “carte da trionfi”, or "triumph cards." The first literary evidence of the existence of carte da trionfi is a written statement in the court records in Ferrara, in 1442. The oldest surviving Tarot cards are from 15 fragmented decks painted in the mid 15th century for the Visconti-Sforza family, the rulers of Milan.
Patricia ancestry comes from a long line of Tarot Readers going back centuries, her great, great-grandmother was from Italy, a region east of Naples near Mount Vesuvius known as the Campobasso Valley. It was here that Patricia’s family tradition of reading the Tarot began.
