MARCO POLO, TRAVELLING FROM VENICE TO THE WORLD

Today, The Grandma has been reading about one of the most interesting figures of all time, Marco Polo, the Venetian merchant, explorer, and writer who was born on a day like today in 1254.

Marco Polo (September 15, 1254-January 8, 1324) was a Venetian merchant, explorer, and writer who travelled through Asia along the Silk Road between 1271 and 1295. His travels are recorded in The Travels of Marco Polo, aka Book of the Marvels of the World and Il Milione, c. 1300, a book that described to Europeans the then mysterious culture and inner workings of the Eastern world, including the wealth and great size of the Mongol Empire and China in the Yuan Dynasty, giving their first comprehensive look into China, Persia, India, Japan and other Asian cities and countries.

Born in Venice, Marco learned the mercantile trade from his father and his uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, who travelled through Asia and met Kublai Khan.

In 1269, they returned to Venice to meet Marco for the first time. The three of them embarked on an epic journey to Asia, exploring many places along the Silk Road until they reached Cathay (China).

They were received by the royal court of Kublai Khan, who was impressed by Marco's intelligence and humility. Marco was appointed to serve as Khan's foreign emissary, and he was sent on many diplomatic missions throughout the empire and Southeast Asia, such as in present-day Burma, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

More information: Silk Road

As part of this appointment, Marco also traveled extensively inside China, living in the emperor's lands for 17 years and seeing many things that had previously been unknown to Europeans.

Around 1291, the Polos also offered to accompany the Mongol princess Kököchin to Persia; they arrived around 1293. After leaving the princess, they travelled overland to Constantinople and then to Venice, returning home after 24 years.

At this time, Venice was at war with Genoa; Marco was captured and imprisoned by the Genoans after joining the war effort and dictated his stories to Rustichello da Pisa, a cellmate. He was released in 1299, became a wealthy merchant, married, and had three children.

He died in 1324 and was buried in the church of San Lorenzo in Venice.

Though he was not the first European to reach China, Marco Polo was the first to explore some parts of Asia and to leave a detailed chronicle of his experience. 

This account of the Orient provided the Europeans with a clear picture of the East's geography and ethnic customs and was the first Western record of porcelain, coal, gunpowder, paper money, and some Asian plants and exotic animals. His travel book inspired Christopher Columbus and many other travellers. There is substantial literature based on Polo's writings; he also influenced European cartography, leading to the introduction of the Fra Mauro map.

Marco Polo was born in 1254 in Venice, capital of the Venetian Republic. His father, Niccolò Polo, had his household in Venice and left Marco's pregnant mother in order to travel to Asia with his brother Maffeo Polo.

Their return to Italy in order to go to Venice and visit their household is described in The Travels of Marco Polo as follows: ...they departed from Acre and went to Negropont, and from Negropont they continued their voyage to Venice. On their arrival there, Messer Nicolas found that his wife was dead and that she had left behind her a son of fifteen years of age, whose name was Marco.

Marco Polo's travels may have had some influence on the development of European cartography, ultimately leading to the European voyages of exploration a century later.

The 1453 Fra Mauro map was said by Giovanni Battista Ramusio, disputed by historian/cartographer Piero Falchetta, in whose work the quote appears, to have been partially based on the one brought from Cathay by Marco Polo.

Though Marco Polo never produced a map that illustrated his journey, his family drew several maps to the Far East based on the traveller's accounts. These collections of maps were signed by Polo's three daughters, Fantina, Bellela and Moreta. Not only did it contain maps of his journey, but also sea routes to Japan, Siberia's Kamchatka Peninsula, the Bering Strait and even to the coastlines of Alaska, centuries before the rediscovery of the Americas by Europeans.

More information: Khan Academy

I have not told half of what I saw.

Marco Polo

RETURN TO VENICE: ASUN, BELÉN, EVA & HUGO PRATT

The Grandma ready to sail by gondola

The Grandma is in Venice. She's travelling across the channels enjoying the Venetian culture and the hospitality of its inhabitants. She arrived from Milan on The Orient Express and its first stop has been in the capital of Veneto, where local people celebrated La Biennale last September.

The Grandma loves Venice. She visits this city as times as she can because the city is full of history, art and wonderful people like Asun Holmes, Belén Collins, Eva Collins-Maltese, Marco Polo, Hugo Pratt and Corto Maltese.

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Let's go to know a little more about Venice and Hugo Pratt...

The name of the city, deriving from Latin forms Venetia and Venetiae, is most likely taken from Venetia et Histria, the Roman name of Regio X of Roman Italy, but applied to the coastal part of the region that remained under Roman Empire outside of Gothic, Lombard, and Frankish control. The name Venetia, however, derives from the Roman name for the people known as the Veneti, and called by the Greeks Eneti (Ἐνετοί). The meaning of the word is uncertain, although there are other Indo-European tribes with similar-sounding names, such as the Celtic Veneti, Baltic Veneti, and the Slavic Wends.

Hugo Pratt and Corto Maltese

The Grandma is a fan of Hugo Pratt's comics, especially Corto Maltese. She wants to talk about an old friend, Hugo, and her memories with him. They shared incredible moments when they travelled around the world.

Hugo Eugenio Pratt (1927-1995) was an Italian comic book creator who was known for combining strong storytelling with extensive historical research on works such as Corto Maltese.

Born in Rimini, Hugo Pratt spent most of his childhood in Venice in a very cosmopolitan family environment. His paternal grandfather Joseph was of English origin. In 1937, Hugo Pratt moved with his mother to Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Pratt's father, a professional Italian soldier, was captured in 1941 by British troops and in late 1942, died from disease as a prisoner of war. The same year, Hugo Pratt and his mother were interned in a prison camp at Dirédaoua, where he would buy comics from guards, and later was sent back to Italy by the Red Cross. In 1944, he was at risk of being executed as SS troops had mistaken him for a South African spy.

More information: Commune di Venezia

After the war, Pratt moved to Venice where he organized entertainment for the Allied troops. Later Pratt joined the Venice Group with other Italian cartoonists, including Alberto Ongaro and Mario Faustinelli. His character Asso di Picche (Ace of Spades) was a success.

Inside Ponte di Sospiri

In the late 1940s, he moved to Buenos Aires. He often travelled to South American destinations like the Amazon and Mato Grosso. During that period he produced his first comic book as a complete author, both writing and illustrating Anna della jungla (Ann of the Jungle).

He moved again to Italy in 1962 where he started a collaboration with the children's comic book magazine Il Corriere dei Piccoli, for which he adapted several classics of adventure literature, including Treasure Island and Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson.

In 1967, Pratt met Florenzo Ivaldi, and with him created a comics magazine named after his character, Il Sergente Kirk, the hero first written by Héctor Oesterheld. In the first issue, Pratt's most famous story was published: Una ballata del mare salato (A Ballad of the Salt Sea), which introduced his best known character, Corto Maltese.

Corto's series continued three years later in the French magazine Pif gadget. Due to his rather mixed family ancestry, Pratt had learned snippets of things like kabbalism and lots of history. Many of his stories are placed in real historical eras and deal with real events: the 1755 war between French and British colonists in Ticonderoga or colonial wars in Africa and both World Wars. Pratt did exhaustive research for factual and visual details, and some characters are real historical figures or loosely based on them, like Corto's main friend/enemy, Rasputin. Many of the minor characters cross over into other stories in a way that places all of Pratt’s stories into the same continuum.

Pratt's main series in the second part of his career include Gli scorpioni del deserto (five stories) and Jesuit Joe.

The Grandma inside Palazzo Ducale

From 1970 to 1984, Pratt lived mainly in France where Corto Maltese, a psychologically very complex character resulting from the travel experiences and the endless inventive capacity of his author, became the main character of a comics series. Initially published from 1970 to 1973 by the magazine Pif gadget, it brought him much popular and critical success. Later published in album format, this series was eventually translated into fifteen languages.

From 1984 to 1995 Pratt lived in Switzerland where the international success that Corto Maltese sparked continued to grow. Hugo Pratt continued to travel from Canada to Patagonia, from Africa to the Pacific area. He died of bowel cancer on 20 August 1995.

Pratt has cited authors like Robert Louis Stevenson, James Oliver Curwood, Zane Grey, Kenneth Roberts, Joseph Conrad, Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville and Jack London as influences, along with cartoonists Lyman Young, Will Eisner, and especially Milton Caniff.

More information: Venice Carnival 2017

Venice is the perfect place for a phase of art to die. No other city on earth embraces entropy quite like this magical floating mall.
 

Jerry Saltz

TRAMONTATE, STELLE! ALL'ALBA VINCERÒ!

Tramontane is a classical name for a northern wind. The exact form of the name and precise direction varies from country to country. The word came to English from Italian tramontana, which developed from Latin trānsmontānus (trāns- + montānus), "beyond/across the mountains", referring to the Alps in the North of Italy. 

The word has other non-wind-related senses: it can refer to anything that comes from, or anyone who lives on, the other side of mountains, or even more generally, anything seen as foreign, strange, or even barbarous.

THE DANGEROUS PLACES: GULF OF LION AND ALT EMPORDÀ

In the zones of Gulf of Lion and Alt Empordà, the tramontane (named Tramuntana in Catalan) is a strong, dry cold wind from the north (on the Mediterranean) or from the northwest (in lower Languedoc, Roussillon, Catalonia and the Balearic Islands). It is similar to the mistral in its causes and effects, but it follows a different corridor; the tramontane accelerates as it passes between the Pyrenees and the Massif Central, while the mistral flows down the Rhone Valley between the Alps and the Massif Central in France.

The tramontane is created by the difference of pressure between the cold air of a high pressure system over the Atlantic Ocean or northwest Europe and a low pressure system over the Gulf of Lion in the Mediterranean. The high-pressure air flows south, gathering speed as moves downhill and is funnelled between the Pyrenees and the Massif Central. 

According to French sources, the name was used in its present form at the end of the 13th century by Marco Polo, in 1298. It was borrowed from the Latin "transmontanus" and the Italian "tramontana", meaning not just "across the mountains" but also "the North Star" (literally the star "above the mountains"), since the Alps marked the north for the Italic people. The French term tresmontaine, cited as early as 1209 and still used in the 15th century, was borrowed directly from the Latin.

More information: NASA Weather

 Le vent qui vient à travers la montagne me rendra fou.

The wind coming over the mountain will drive me mad.

Victor Hugo, Gastibelza