Researchers at the University of Warwick’s Warwick Venice Centre, will restore a significant historical document that has been lost for more than 70 years and which gives us an important new perspective on global exchange in the decade after Marco Polo’s death.

The most important testimony on the Venetian merchants who followed in the steps of Marco Polo in Asia in the decade after his death is attested by a parchment held at the Venetian State Archives. It narrates the travels, investments and commercial enterprises of six Venetian nobles who right after coming back from China left again for the Sultanate of Dehli in 1338, bringing with them two mechanical marvels (a clock and a fountain) that were offered as a gift to the Sultan Ibn Tugluq. The Sultan reciprocated with a counter-gift of 200,000 local silver coins that the Venetians used to buy pearls and other Asian luxury goods. The large parchment (93x68 cm), almost forgotten today by scholars of Venetian history, is in a very poor state of conservation.