Most travelers wonder what the city awaiting them will be like.

Polo says, 'What had been until yesterday a possible future became only a toy in a glass globe.' The building has become a museum, and residents visit it to choose the model that resembles their desires. Each model was made by someone envisioning its ideal form, but as each model was constructed, Fedora was already changing. These models represent the forms the city could have taken if it had not become its current iteration. Marco Polo describes the city of Fedora as a 'gray stone metropolis.' In its center is a metal building with a crystal globe in every room, and in each globe is a model of a different version of Fedora.

Visitors must not note that different cities of the same name may follow one another, 'born and dying without knowing one another.' The Maurilia in the postcards is not the city as it once was, but rather a different city with the same name. To please the city's residents, visitors need to praise the city in the postcards more than the present incarnation. Visitors to Maurilia are invited to look at old postcards that show what the city used to be like. In addition, says Polo, every time he visits a new city, he encounters someone living a life that could have been his own had he taken a different path. Kublai asks Polo the point of his travels, and Polo says traveling enables him to give Kublai a unique vantage point on the cities of his empire. Kublai Khan says his other ambassadors tell him about catastrophes and discoveries, but Marco Polo tells him only his thoughts.

Marco polo invisible cities