Curzola (Korčula) – Photo by G. Vale
Where was Marco Polo born? What is his native country? A question that made little sense in the 13th century – everything was under the control of the Republic of Venice – but nowadays it is a source of diatribes, especially between Croatia and Italy. A new project tries to overcome them
More than ten years have passed since, in 2011, the former Croatian president Stjepan Mesić inaugurated a museum dedicated to Marco Polo in Yangzou in China, unleashing an uproar in the Italian press . The question of the birthplace of the author of Million has long polluted Italian-Croatian relations, but now it seems that a positive turning point has been reached.
In Curzola (Korčula), what until the early 2000s was known as the “birthplace of Marco Polo” has been transformed into an “Interpretive Center” dedicated to the great traveler and financed by the Interreg Italy-Croatia programme . Inside the museum space – inaugurated last Friday – one no longer encounters the age-old Croatian claim according to which Marco Polo was born in Korčula, but a general presentation of the European context of the thirteenth century and travels to the Far East. The logo of the new center itself is composed of a lion and a dragon, a reference to the symbols of the Republic of Venice and China.
An age-old question
Mesić’s trip to China (which was followed by many others in a rather unusual pro-Chinese lobbying activity for a former European head of state) fits into the broader context of the diatribe over Marco Polo, or rather over where was he born.
The question, according to some, is open, so much so that the same Treccani encyclopaedia uses a compromise formula, indicating: “Polo, Marco – Venetian traveler (Venice or Curzola 1254 – Venice 1324)”. In fact, there is no document that exactly certifies the explorer’s birthplace and it seems certain that his family had ancient Dalmatian origins, more precisely from Sebenico (Šibenik). At the time, these discussions made little sense, given that all these territories belonged to the same state: the Republic of Venice, which controlled almost the entire eastern coast of the Adriatic.
Today, however, the debate is alive. On the Italian side, scholars such as Alvise Zorzi, author among other things of a biography of the explorer, they argue that “there is no doubt that Marco Polo was Venetian, his family had been Venetian since the tenth century”. On the Croatian side, however, the fact is asserted that a certain “DePolo” family owned some houses in Korčula, even if the one that has been referred to for years as the traveler’s birthplace was built at least two centuries after his death of the same. It’s not much, but enough to fuel the local tourist narrative.
Marko Polo Center (photo by G. Vala)
From “birthplace” to Interpretive Centre
Until 2003, therefore, Korcula boasted the “birthplace” of Marco Polo. Then the building was closed for renovation and has now reopened under a new guise. The “Marco Polo Center ” is a multifunctional center, a museum and a place of study. Meetings and debates will be organized under the banner of culture and encounter, as the curator Vicko Marelić notes, who speaks of “homo adriaticus” in referring to Marco Polo. The project has a total value of approximately 1.3 million euros and was financed by the municipality of Korčula, the Dubrovnik county, various Croatian ministries as well as the VALUE project under the Interreg Italy-Croatia programme, which provided 360,000 euros.
Organized on several floors, the multimedia space covers almost 300 square meters, guiding the visitor through maps and information panels, interactive screens and period objects. The focus is no longer the claim of Polo’s paternity, but the context in which his travels in the East took place, from European geopolitics of the thirteenth century to the figure of Kublai Khan, from the plague to religion in the Middle Ages. On the ground floor there is a small research room, where you want to collect books on Marco Polo and the many editions of Millionwhile on the top floor a panoramic point allows you to admire both the center of Korcula, with the nearby fifteenth-century cathedral, and the sea.
In particular, it is advisable to look towards that stretch of sea where the “battle of Curzola” took place on 7 September 1298, which pitted the fleet of the Serenissima against the Genoese one and saw the victory of the latter. A large section of the museum is dedicated to the battle – which saw admirals Andrea Dandolo and Lamba Doria challenge each other, at the helm of 96 and 76 ships respectively – on the basis of the fact that Marco Polo himself also took part in the battle. According to legend, Polo was captured by the Genoese (another version claims that he was taken prisoner in southern Turkey). In any case, it was during his captivity in Genoa that the traveler – who had returned from the East in 1295 after more than twenty years of travel – dictated his book to Rustichello da Pisa.
Marko Polo Center (photo by G. Vala)
Tourism first
In the intentions of the curator Vicko Marelić, the Center will welcome “tens of thousands of people a year” – “perhaps a million!”, he jokes. Like most of the Croatian islands, Korčula thrives on tourism, even if it registers a smaller flow than the nearby Hvar (Hvar) and Brač (Brač). In 2019, Korčula welcomed almost 175,000 tourists (Hvar 331,000) for a total of 927,000 hotel nights (Hvar 1.6 million). Last year instead we stopped at 138,000 visitors and 732,000 overnight stays. The most numerous tourists came from Croatia itself, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Slovenia.
In this context, the new Center therefore serves above all to increase the tourist offer of the island and to differentiate it from the others, associating it with an internationally known name. “Korčula, the city of Marco Polo”, is already today the motto of the city tourist office . «The Marco Polo super-brand can become the biggest tourist attraction in the Mediterranean», Vicko Marelić argued during her inaugural speech. The wishes of Korčula mayor Nika Silić Maroević, who last Thursday cut the ribbon at the entrance to the Marko Polo Centar, go in the same direction: the new center will bring more tourists.
In the meantime, the dispute over the traveler is destined to continue, also because there are not only two parties involved – Korčula and Venice – but at least three. In 2013 the Croatian anthropologist Olga Orlić published a study entitled: «The curious case of Marco Polo of Korčula: an example of invented tradition», a doctoral thesis that studies just how a legend without historical evidence has become a tradition in which citizens and local institutions recognize themselves. During an interview for the project Extinguished Countries , a couple of years ago, Orlić recounted that, shortly after the publication of his work, he received a phone call from an association in Šibenik. «Well done, Dr. Orlić, you’re right!», they said on the other end of the phone, «we know that Marco Polo was born in Šibenik and we have proof of that!».
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