"Built for the present Great Khan, Kublai Khan, here there is a stone and marble palace with gilded rooms wonderfully decorated with magnificent and delicate paintings of birds, trees and flowers of every kind. Leading away from the palace is a wall which encloses sixteen miles of fertile ground with rivers and streams running through it. Here the Great Khan raises every sort of animal, including fallow deer and roebuck which are fed to the many gerfalcons and falcons, and at least once a week he goes to look at them. He often rides through these gardens with a leopard squatting on his horse's hindquarters…
"In the middle of the enclosed garden there is a beautiful wood where Kublai Khan has a royal palace built of gilded and painted reed columns. On top of each column is a gilt dragon, its tail wrapped round the column and its head and outstretched paws supporting the roof…
"On 28 August the Great Khan leaves the beautiful palace. He always departs on the same day for some strange reason. He breeds snow-white horses of which he has an enormous number. He has more than 10,000 mares alone and their milk may be drunk only by people of Jenghiz Khan's lineage… So great is the respect inspired by these fine horses that no one, not even a nobleman, would dare to get in their way."
Learn more:
Marco Polo and His Travels
The Travels of Marco Polo