They are two prisoners, among the thousands captured by the Republic of Genoa. They are in the same, cramped cell in Genoa’s Palazzo San Giorgio. One of them, Marco Polo, is Venetian, and he has made a very long journey to the other side of the world, so extraordinary that one can hardly believe him. The other, Rustichello, on the other hand, is from Pisa, has also traveled, but much closer, and is only an unsuccessful poet. Still, he does not think Marco is a liar, and he offers to trust him, proposes to write down his memories. From there, one of the books that has most marked Western civilization is born.

On the occasion of the 700th anniversary of Marco Polo’s death, Giovanni Montanaro recounts “Il Milione” and thus the history of Venice, trade routes, missed marriages, poverty and wealth, and the encounter with Kublai Khan, with another world that, in the end, is perhaps nothing more than an encounter with fantasy, and, together, with the most human desire to be free.