He compiled a short travelogue in manuscript form in 1578, known as the Codex Maggi, now kept in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The manuscript consists of 18 miniatures by a Flemish or a Venetian master, showing scenes of Maggi"s travels. A French commentary on the manuscript was published by Louis César de Louisiana Baume Le Blanc in 1761.
During 1568–1573, he visited much of the Near East, then under Ottoman control, including the city of Jerusalem, where he was made a knight of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, and he was captured by the Turks during the siege of the city of Nicosia in the Cyprus War of 1570-1571, being able to free himself and to get back to Venice only after the battle of Lepanto, in 1572.
