Unraveling the Paths of Calvino

So, there´s a special path you must follow to understand Invisible Cities and I have various theories of the characteristics this path has. The key is, I believe, the conversations between Marco Polo and the Kublai Khan. The following citations seemed relevant enough to evaluate the order:


"There is one [city] of which you never speak."
 Marco Polo bowed his head.
"Venice." the Khan said.
....
"Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice... To distinguish other cities´ qualities, I must speak of a first city that remains implicit. For me it is Venice."
(pg. 86)

  ----------------------------------------------

"Kublai Khan had noticed that Marco Polo´s cities resembled one another, as if the passage from one to another involved not a journey but a change of elements." (pg. 43)

 ----------------------------------------------

"Now, from each city Marco described to him, the Great Khan´s mind set out on its own, and after dismantling the city piece by piece, he reconstructed it in other ways, substituting components, shifting them, inverting them." (pg. 43)

 ----------------------------------------------

"Memory´s images, once they are fixed in words, are erased," Polo said. "Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little. " (pg. 87)


So, all the cities resemble each other and there are slight changes between them. I have inferred that the starting city of the path would be Venice, and then a city called Esmeralda. Of all the cities I read about, this one seems the most closely related to Venice because of its canals.

"In Esmeralda, city of water, a network of canals and a network of streets span and intersect each other." pg 88


I had developed this path but then realized it isn´t possible beacuse Marco Polo knew his own Venice, and nowadays, anyone whose been there knows their own Venice because they have had different experiences and have learned a variety of things.