Venice and China in the Time of Marco Polo

In 1271, Marco Polo left Venice with his father and an uncle, and together they reached “Cathay”, as China was then called. After that long journey along the Silk Road, he settled at the court of the Great Khan Kublai and remained there for 14 years before returning to Italy. That extraordinary undertaking is documented in Il Milione, an account of the first contacts between East and West that opened up commercial and cultural exchanges. The exhibition includes an introductory chronology, which describes the history and main events of Venice and its nearby coastal cities between the 13th and 17th centuries, from the life of Marco Polo to the centuries immediately following. Among the most significant works are the so-called Marco Polo Bible, the facsimile of Marco Polo's Testament, a series of original Venetian gold coins and zecchini, a valuable bas-relief in Istrian stone depicting the Lion of St. Mark and a magnificent series of Venetian views on loan from the Correr Museum in Venice, as well as the reproduction of the Fra Mauro Map, considered the greatest testimony of medieval cartography.