The City In The Travels Of Marco Polo

Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant that had an extraordinary life. As a young adult, Marco would begin a monumental journey that would span continents and would solidify his place in history. His story would become wildly popular and spark many imaginations when it was dictated to and written down by Rustichello da Pisa, in The Travels of Marco Polo (c.1300). Along with his father and uncle, Marco set out for the seat of Kublai Khan at Khanbaliq, Cathay. During the 17 years Marco was in Kublai’s service, he would travel throughout the empire doing the great Khan’s bidding. It is unclear when Marco made his way to the city of Hangzhou, the former capital of the defeated southern Song dynasty, but the city left a lasting impression on him. In fact, Marco Polo believed the city so great in a variety of ways, that he said, “the city is beyond dispute the finest and the noblest in the world.” (cp 179).
He states that the city is supposedly 100 miles in circumference, although it is not clear if Marco is using the Chinese scale or something else (cp 181). He states that the city is so large, and since Hangzhou appears to be in and surrounded by water, the city requires 12,000 stone bridges that are large enough for fleets of ships to pass under (cp 181). The size of the bridges must have struck Marco as magnificent because although his home city of Venice is also along the water and has bridges, he takes time to mention just how large the bridges of Hangzhou are. Marco also comments on the grand scale of the guilds found within the city. So large in scale that each of the 12 guilds had 12,000 homes to house all the workers, with potentially 12-40 men living within each house. As a merchant himself, Marco was impressed with the scale of commerce with the city, and commented on how the leaders of the guilds lived, “delicately as if they were