Ancient Silk Road map comes home

A huge colored map of the Silk Road from a royal court of the mid-Ming Dynasty was officially welcomed home at the Forbidden City in Beijing on Thursday.

The 30-meter-long by 59-centimeter-wide scroll, named the Landscape Map of the Silk Road, is painted on silk. It depicts trade routes starting at Jiayuguan - at the western end of the Great Wall during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) - through Central and West Asia to the Middle East.

As many as 221 cities in what now are some 10 countries are on the scroll. Included were key spots on the ancient Silk Road, like Gansu province's Dunhuang, Mecca, Damascus, Esfahan in Iran and Samarqand in Uzbekistan.