Everyone knows about Marco Polo, but few know about Matteo Ricci, the Italian scholar who introduced several Chinese classic works to the West.

Ricci, who lived in China during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), and Chinese official Xu Guangqi together translated the first six books of Greek mathematician Euclid's Elements discourse into Mandarin. This is one of the earliest pieces of evidence of a Sino-Italian cultural exchange.

Now, Bulgari, the luxury jeweler from Rome, is joining the Ricci Association, a Paris-based organization dedicated to compiling dictionaries, to continue Ricci's efforts to strengthen cultural connections between China and Italy, the two sides announced at a ceremony in Beijing on Wednesday.