In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo--Tartar
emperor and Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan has sensed the end of his
empire coming soon. Marco Polo diverts the emperor with tales of the
cities he has seen in his travels around the empire: cities and memory,
cities and desire, cities and designs, cities and the dead, cities and
the sky, trading cities, hidden cities. Soon it becomes clear that each
of these fantastic places is really the same place.