2024-01-30 06:42:02
VENICE, Italy (AP) — Venice commemorates the 700th anniversary of Marco Polo’s death with a year of events that began with a start to the Carnival dedicated to one of the canal city’s most illustrious sons.
To inaugurate the famous Carnival, some 600 rowers dressed in period dress last weekend, raised their paddles in salute and shouted “We are all Marco Polo” as they rowed along the Grand Canal from St. Mark’s Square to the Bridge of Rialto.
Among the events planned for this year, an important exhibition in the Doge’s Palace will remember the adventurer’s travels, which took him to Asia in the 13th century. He documented his discoveries in his famous memoirs, which gave Europe one of the best written accounts of the Asian continent, its culture, its geography and its people.
The figure of Marco Polo, as an explorer who managed to establish a dialogue with people of other cultures, is particularly relevant today, indicated the mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro. Especially in a city like his, which since the days when it was a maritime republic and a center of commerce has been proud to serve as a bridge between the East and the West, he added.
Last weekend, a visitor dressed as Marco Polo and a masked Carnival figure carried a copy of his memoir, “The Travels of Marco Polo.”
Marco Polo was born in Venice to a merchant family in 1254 and died in the city in 1324, following spending a quarter of a century exploring the Silk Road and serving the Mongol court.
In Venice, a marble plaque on the side of one of its palaces reads “These were the houses of Marco Polo, who traveled to the most distant regions of Asia and described them.”
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