Asia -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; Mongols -- History; Polo, Marco, 1254-1323?; Voyages and travels
There is still to be seen on the north side of the Court an arched
doorway in Italo-Byzantine style, richly sculptured with scrolls,
disks, and symbolical animals, and on the wall above the doorway is a
cross similarly ornamented.[4] The style and the decorations are those
which were usual in Venice in the 13th century. The arch opens into a
passage from which a similar doorway at the other end, also retaining
some scantier relics of decoration, leads to the entrance of the
Malibran Theatre. Over the archway in the Corte Sabbionera the building
rises into a kind of tower. This, as well as the sculptured arches and
cross, Signor Casoni, who gave a good deal of consideration to the
subject, believed to be a relic of the old Polo House. But the tower
(which Pauthier’s view does show) is now entirely modernized.[5]
[Illustration: Malibran Theatre, Venice.]
[Illustration: The site of the CA’ POLO.
Fig. A. From the Dürer Map. A.D. 1500.
Fig. B. From Map by Ludovico Ughi. A.D. 1729 Scale 1 to 2500.
Fig. C. From Recent Map. Scale 1 to 1315.]
Other remains of Byzantine sculpture, which are probably fragments of
the decoration of the same mansion, are found imbedded in the walls of
neighbouring houses.[6] It is impossible to determine anything further
as to the form or extent of the house of the time of the Polos, but
some slight idea of its appearance about the year 1500 may be seen
in the extract (fig. A) which we give from the famous pictorial map
of Venice attributed erroneously to Albert Dürer. The state of the
buildings in the last century is shown in (fig. B) an extract from the
fine Map of Ughi; and their present condition in one (fig. C) reduced
from the Modern Official Map of the Municipality.
[Coming from the Church of S. G. Grisostomo to enter the calle del
Teatro on the left and the passage (_Sottoportico_) leading to the
_Corte del Milione_, one has in front of him a building with a door of
the epoch of the Renaissance; it was the office of the _provveditori_
of silk; on the architrave are engraved the words:
PROVISORES SERICI
and below, above the door, is the Tablet which] in the year 1827 the
Abate Zenier caused to be put up with this inscription:—
AEDES PROXIMA THALIAE CVLTVI MODO ADDICTA
MARCI POLO P. V. ITINERVM FAMA PRAECLARI
JAM HABITATIO FVIT.
[Sidenote: Recent corroboration as to the traditional site of the Casa
Polo.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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