Istanbul, round table on Marco Polo’s travels

The Italian Cultural Institute in Istanbul, in collaboration with the Department of Italian Language and Literature and the Club of Italian Culture at Istanbul University, and with the contribution of the Italian Language and Literature Department at Ankara University, has organised a conference to celebrate the 700^th anniversary of the death of Marco Polo, the great Venetian traveller and author of The Travels of Marco Polo. Italian and Turkish guests, academics and university lecturers will take part in this round table discussion, with the aim of exploring the material and imaginary connected to the figure of Marco Polo and his immortal and extraordinary travel account.

Introduced by Salvatore Schirmo, Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Istanbul, the Director of the Marciana Library in Venice and the National Central Library in Rome, Stefano Campagnolo, will take the floor. Starting from interesting documents preserved in the Libraries of Venice and Rome, he will focus on the various translations of The Travels of Marco Polo; Tiziana Plebani, lecturer at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, with a speech on the traveller's will and preserved documents; and Nevin Özkan Speelman, lecturer and Head of the Department of Italian Language and Literature at Ankara University, who will speak on Marco Polo and Italo Calvino between real and imaginary journeys. Cristiano Bedin, lecturer at the Department of Italian Language and Literature at Istanbul University, will moderate the event.