The Marco Polo Festival returns to Chinatown and Little Italy on Saturday, October 19. This year promises a family pageant that will flow through the streets.
They write:
Two Bridges Neighborhood Council will host its 11TH Annual Marco Polo Street Pageant and Festival (“Festival”) with a grand pageant through the streets of Chinatown and Little Italy on Saturday, October 19, 2019, followed with the Silk Road Ambassador Awards Dinner ( “Dinner”) at 6:00 PM on the evening of October 22, 2019 at the Golden Unicorn Restaurant.
The Festival, which will feature towering marionettes of Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, begins at noon in front of the Chinatown Consolidated Benevolent Association on 62 Mott St., and will wind its way through Mott and Mulberry Streets to Grand Street, followed by music and dance performances the rest of that afternoon.
Both the Festival and Dinner are intended to commemorate more than a century of coexistence of these two immigrant communities, and a celebration of the rich literary, cultural and artistic heritage of their respective Asian and Southern European origins. Marco Polo (1254-1324), the famed Venetian merchant-traveler to the court of Kublai Khan, is chosen as a symbol for this special occasion.
