Kublai Khan listens attentively as Marco Polo tells him about fantastical cities, even though he doesn’t entirely believe everything Marco says. Kublai’s empire is huge and he knows that he’ll never be able to truly understand his conquered territories, which makes him feel melancholy and as though his empire is an unfixable, corrupt ruin. Through Marco’s stories, Kublai begins to see that there’s a pattern to his empire.
Marco describes Diomira, a city with towers. It makes people feel envious of others who believe they’ve experienced similar evenings and think that they were happy. In Isidora, a person can find every delight—but men who arrive there arrive in old age, not in their youth. It’s possible to describe Dorothea by listing its exports, but it’s also possible to say, as a camel driver once told Marco, that Dorothea opens up horizons. Marco then tells Kublai about Zaira, where the measurements of certain things correspond to events from Zaira’s past. In this sense, Zaira’s past is written in those things while making people feel as though they can enjoy the city. Marco details his experience in Tamara, a city in which people don’t see things. Instead, people see pictures or sculptures of things that refer to other things. Because of this, he insists that people can never discover the city. Zora is a city that is unforgettable, but only because it never changed. This caused it to disappear. Marco tells Kublai about Despina, which looks different depending on where a traveler comes from. Zirma repeats itself so that people can remember it, but different visitors remember different things. Isaura was built over an underground lake, and there’s debate as to whether the city’s gods live in the wells or in its lake.
When Marco begins describing things to Kublai, he doesn’t speak Kublai’s language so he uses objects and gestures. Kublai memorizes the meanings of the objects. Eventually, Marco learns the language and Kublai begins to ask if he’ll possess his empire once he learns the meaning of every object. Marco insists that at that point, Kublai will become an emblem, just like the objects. As time goes on, Kublai gets annoyed that Marco doesn’t tell him anything useful. Both men fall into silence and conduct a conversation in their heads. They imagine Marco saying that when people get lost they better understand where they came from and how they fit into the world.
Marco describes Maurilia, a magnificent metropolis where visitors must look at postcards of Maurilia when it was still provincial. Nobody back then thought provincial Maurilia was charming, but they idealize it now. Marco suggests that the Maurilia of today and the Maurilia of the past are different cities. In Fedora, the city has a museum filled with model Fedoras. Each model Fedora is someone’s ideal version of the city. In describing Zoe, Marco suggests that people expect to be able to figure out a city quickly, but Zoe doesn’t allow this: a person can do anything anywhere. Zenobia, meanwhile, is a city on stilts where people generally think that their ideal city looks like Zenobia. 80 miles away is Euphemia, a trading city where merchants gather to exchange stories. However, when merchants leave, they find that they can’t remember their own stories—others’ stories corrupt their own. Marco describes things with objects and gestures. Kublai finds that this leaves lots of room for him to use his own imagination. As they learn to communicate in the same language, communicating becomes less fun until the two men spend most of their time sitting silently.
Kublai declares that he’s going to describe cities and Marco will tell him if they’re real. He describes one and Marco says it’s real, but it doesn’t have a name or location—it’s an imagined city with no connecting thread. He insists that cities are built with desires and fears and most think that they were built rationally, but that doesn’t keep them standing. Zobeide is a white city. Men dreamed of chasing a naked woman who got away, and so they convened in Zobeide to build the scene of the chase. They now understand that Zobeide is a trap. In Hypatia, Marco can’t find things in expected places. Armilla is a city composed entirely of plumbing. Naked women bathe, and Marco wonders if humans built it to atone for abusing the earth’s water. In Chloe, people don’t talk and instead, imagine encounters. Valdrada, meanwhile, is built so that every action reflects in its water—and those reflections are more important than the actions.
Kublai describes a dream city. Marco says the city is real, but he’ll never be able to tell Kublai about it. As time goes on, Kublai feels alternately like his empire is rotting and like it’s in a fantastic state. Marco describes Olivia, which can be described as a beautiful city or a nasty one. The city Sophronia is made up of two halves. One is a carnival and the other seems permanent, but the permanent half picks up and leaves for half the year. Eutropia consists of many cities, and its residents move from Eutropia to Eutropia. If a person looks up in Zemrude, they’ll see beauty, while if they look down, the view is grim. Most people end up looking down, and few look up again. In Aglaura, people are too caught up in stories of an ancient Aglaura to accurately describe the Aglaura they live in. Kublai and Marco discuss whether they can come up with a model city to figure out all other cities.
Kublai watches his empire grow. At first the edges seem ill but after a while, the empire seems bloated and heavy. Marco tells him about Octavia, a city suspended over a void. Residents know their city won’t last forever. In Ersilia, people stretch strings to denote relationships, but they move constantly and try to rebuild the city and do it better. Baucis is a city on tall stilts. Travelers seldom see the residents, but some believe that they spend their time studying the earth and contemplating their absence. In Leandra, there are two types of gods, the Penates and the Lares. The gods argue about which of them is the soul of the city. In Melania, people are born into roles and conduct the same conversations over and over again over the years. Marco describes a bridge for Kublai, but Kublai wants to know which stone in the bridge is the most important. Marco insists that the bridge is the important part.
One day, Kublai and Marco stay up all night. At dawn, Kublai points out that Marco never speaks of Venice, but Marco insists that he talks about Venice whenever he describes a city. He describes Esmeralda, a city that, if Kublai wants to map it, must include the routes that the rats take as well as those of the swallows. In Phyllis, Marco insists that travelers who have to stay in a new city become numb to their surroundings. He then explains how he used to think Pyrrha looked one way, but after being there, he can’t fathom how he ever thought it looked like that. He details a harrowing experience in Adelma, where everyone looked like a deceased friend. In Eudoxia, Marco says that there’s a carpet that the residents believe is a divine map of the city and of the universe, but it’s also possible that Eudoxia itself is the map of the universe. Kublai declares that Marco is traveling through memory, but it’s possible that both men imagine this.
Marco and Kublai begin to wonder if they aren’t in Kublai’s garden—their conversation may be taking place in their minds. Marco tells Kublai about Moriana, which has a beautiful side and a dark side. Nearby Clarice has a long history of decay and renewal, but the survivors rebuild Clarice until the city is unrecognizable. Eusapia has a city for the dead below it, but it’s possible that the dead Eusapia built the living version—and it’s impossible to tell who’s alive and who’s dead. Beersheba strives to be good, but in reality, it’s greedy and corrupt. In Leonia, people throw out their belongings daily and one day, there will be a landslide of garbage. Marco and Kublai wonder if they exist.
Kublai reasons that if he can turn learning about each city into a game of chess, he can come up with rules that will let him understand his empire. He asks Marco to describe cities using chess pieces, which Marco does. Kublai begins to question the point of playing chess, since people win and lose but the board remains. Marco describes Irene, a city he’s never visited—if he were to visit, it would warrant a new name. Argia is made of earth and travelers must trust that it exists. In Thekla, builders build their city to mimic the stars, believing that if they build forever, Thekla can never decline. Marco details arriving in Trude and learning that Trude covers the whole world. In Olinda, it’s possible to find the heart of the city, which grows in concentric circles. Kublai continues to think about the point of chess as Marco “reads” the wood of the chessboard. Kublai pulls out his atlas. He and Marco discuss that the listener dictates the course of a story, and Kublai admits that he feels like a prisoner of human society. Marco is able to identify cities on the map and plot routes to some, and he can see that in the future, San Francisco will be part of an empire bigger than Kublai’s.
Marco describes Laudomia, which includes a city for the living, one for the dead, and one for the unborn. The living constantly ask the dead and the unborn for insight into their own lives. Nobody wants to contemplate that humanity might go forever, or that it might end. Astronomers established Perinthia to reflect the gods, but after a few generations, monsters populate the city. Astronomers have to decide if their calculations were incorrect or if the gods are monstrous. Marco stops every year in Procopia and last time he was there, he was in a hotel room with 26 versions of himself. Raissa is a sad city, but it doesn’t know that there’s a happy one within it. In Andria, life follows the stars and people look for a change in the sky when they change things. People there are prudent and self-confident. Cecelia was once a single city but now, according to a lost goatherd, Cecelia is everywhere. Marozia, meanwhile, is composed of a city of rats and of swallows, and the two cities are locked in a constant struggle of the swallows to free themselves from the rats. Marco then describes Penthesilea, which is impossible to enter—the outskirts go on forever. In Theodora, humans spent years eradicating animals but now, the animals are beginning to take over again. Berenice has two cities within it, one just and one unjust. The just one constantly tries to free itself from the unjust, but within the movement of the just lies a desire to live as corruptly as the unjust do.
Kublai flips through his atlas and looks at cities like New Harmony and Utopia. He asks Marco to chart routes there, but Marco insists that they can’t predict which ones will come to pass. Kublai finds nightmare cities like Enoch and Brave New World. He declares that it’s inevitable that they’ll end up in the infernal city. Marco points out that if the infernal city is real, they’re already in it. To keep from being overwhelmed, people can either let the inferno become background or they can look for things that aren’t part of the inferno and try to preserve those parts.
