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"Invisible Cities" deconstructs an archetypal example of the travel literature genre, "The Travels of Marco Polo," which depicts the journey of the famed Venetian merchant across Asia and in Yuan China (Mongol Empire). The original 13th-century travelogue shares with Calvino's novel the brief, often fantastic accounts of the cities Polo claimed to have visited, along with descriptions of the city's inhabitants, notable imports and exports, and whatever interesting tales Polo had heard about the region.