Marco Polo

Their life

A Venetian merchant who left for Asia at seventeen with his father and uncle, spent some seventeen years in the service of Kublai Khan, and returned to a Venice that barely recognised him. Captured in a war with Genoa, he shared a cell with the romance writer Rustichello da Pisa and dictated the account that became the Book of the Marvels of the World — which introduced paper money, coal, the imperial postal relay and the scale of Asian cities to a Europe that mostly refused to believe him. Scholars still argue about how much he witnessed: he never mentions the Great Wall, tea, or foot-binding, and Rustichello demonstrably embroidered. The deathbed line "I have not told half of what I saw" is almost certainly a later invention.

Known for

• Travels in Kublai Khan's China
• The Description of the World
• Dictating to Rustichello da Pisa
• Describing paper money to Europe
• Opening Europe's view of Asia

The road they walked

Marco Polo was born in 1254 into a Venice that lived by the sea and by trade. The city was a mercantile republic with outposts across the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and his father Niccolò and uncle Maffeo were jewel and goods traders who had already worked their way to Constantinople and the Crimea. Marco was a small boy when they set out on a journey that carried them deep into the Mongol world, and his mother had died by the time they came home. He grew up largely without his father, in the care of relatives.

In 1271 the brothers set out again, this time with seventeen-year-old Marco, carrying letters for the Great Khan. The route ran through Anatolia, Persia, and the high passes of the Pamirs, then along the edge of the Taklamakan and on to the court of Kublai Khan, which took roughly three and a half years. By his own account Marco learned languages quickly and was given tasks and missions by the Khan, travelling in his service through parts of China and beyond. Historians note that Chinese records do not mention him, and they debate how high his position really was, but the broad outline of a long stay in Mongol Asia is widely accepted.

The Polos left around 1291, escorting a Mongol princess to Persia by sea, a voyage past Sumatra, Ceylon, and India, and reached Venice around 1295. Within a few years Marco was taken prisoner, probably in a naval clash with Genoa around 1298, and in a Genoese prison he met Rustichello da Pisa, a writer of Arthurian romances. Together they produced the book usually called the Description of the World, or Il Milione. It was copied by hand in many versions, so the text is unstable, and Rustichello's literary hand is visible in it. The book gave Europe an early and detailed picture of Asian cities, paper money, coal, and the Mongol postal system, and many readers took it as a tall tale. Scholars still argue about how much Marco saw himself and how much he gathered from others. He omits things we might expect, such as tea, the Great Wall, and foot-binding.

How their story ended

Marco Polo died in Venice in January 1324, in his late sixties, after he had long been a respected merchant with a household and daughters. He made a will, which survives, and the cause of his death is not recorded. The famous deathbed line, that he had not told half of what he saw, appears only in later tradition, and most historians treat it as legend rather than record.

In their words

We attribute every quotation to the person we believe said it, and cite the source where we can place it. If you spot a misattribution or a factual error, please tell us — we will check it and correct the record.

Tables where Marco sits

The Caravanserai

For finding your way, and your footing, in worlds not your own.

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