About twenty years after Rubruck's mission, a 17-year-old Italian youth set off for the East with his father and uncle, who arrived in Dadu, the capital of the Yuan Dynasty four years later and ...

The area, between two parallel rivers, has been settled for about 3,000 years, but the Central Axis itself originated during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) that established its capital, Dadu, in the ...