The castle of sun was expecially commissioned for the Venice Pavillon at the 2013 Biennale. That years' theme was "Silk Map", a nod to the city's history as a commercial and cultural crossroads, and Marialuisa Tadei was one of several artist to collaborate with leading Venetian texile firm in making works which reflected that heritage. Tadei drew inspriration from Marco Polo's journey along the Silk Road to the orient. That event also fascineted Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose poem Kubla Khan conjured up a vision of the Chinese Emperor's pleasure pavillon as a "sunny done".
Tadei believed that such a stucture might once again provide a space which travellers from different part of world could share and admire. The longing to to experience the new and the unknown is one of the most profound of human desires , and an urge which Tadei often explores in her work, stressing as it does the importance of the spiritual aspects of life.