The three Polos depart for the summer palace of Kublai Khan. There'll be Assassins, baked corpses, and papal elections along the way! There'll be the conclusion of the longest of interregnums with the election of Gregory X, the threat of Mamluk attacks, the remnants of Alexander the Great, Prester John, Ong Khan, and Shangdu.
(MP3)
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Sources:
The Travels of Marco Polo, the Venetian, translated by William Marsden, edited by Thomas Wright. George Bell & Sons, 1907.
The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck, translated by Peter Jackson. The Hakluyt Society, 1990.
Cathay and the Way Thither, Being a Collection of Medieval Notices of China, Vol. III, translated and edited by Henry Yule and Henri Cordier. London, 1916.
Ackroyd, Peter. Venice: Pure City. Chatto & Windus, 2009.
Daftary, Farhad. The Assassin Legends. I. B. Tauris, 1994.
Larner, John. Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World. Yale University Press, 1999.
Madden, Thomas F. Venice: A New History. Viking, 2012.
Olschki, Leonardo. Marco Polo's Asia. University of California Press, 1960.
Steinhardt, Nancy Shatzman. Chinese Imperial City Planning. University of Hawaii Press, 1999.