The Travels of Marco Polo

…to this day there has been no man, Christian or Pagan, Tartar or Indian, or of any race whatsoever, who has known or explored so many of the various parts of the world and of its great wonders as …Marco Polo.

—From the Prologue to The Travels of Marco Polo

Introduction:

Marco Polo is probably the most famous Westerner to have traveled along the Silk Road. His journey through Asia lasted 24 years. He was one of the first Europeans to travel along the Silk Road and reach China. He became an advisor to Kublai Khan and traveled the whole of China and returned to Italy to tell the tale.

Three years after Marco returned to Venice, he commanded a galley in a war against the rival city of Genoa. He was captured during the fighting and spent a year in a Genoese prison - where one of his fellow-prisoners was a writer of romances named Rustichello of Pisa. It was only when prompted by Rustichello that Marco Polo dictated the story of his travels, known in his time as The Description of the World or The Travels of Marco Polo.

His account of the wealth of Cathay (China), the might of the Mongol empire, and the exotic customs of India and Africa made his book a bestseller soon after. The book became one of the most popular books in Europe. It was known as Il Milione, The Million Lies, and Marco earned the nickname of Marco Milione because few believed that his stories were true and most Europeans dismissed the book as mere fable.

Activity:

1. Visit the website below and trace Marco Polo's journey from Venice to China and back.

Marco Polo's route to China and back

Lasting Contributions of Marco Polo

Fiction or not, accounts told by Marco Polo have captured readers through the centuries. Manuscript editions of his work ran into the hundreds within a century after his death. The book was recognized as the most important account of the world outside Europe that was available at the time. Today there are more than 80 manuscript copies in various versions and several languages around the world.

Marco Polo was quite capable of comprehending cultures very different from his own. Marco's book has become the most influential travelogue on the Silk Road ever written in a European language, and it paved the way for the arrivals of thousands of Westerners in the centuries to come.

Today experts are conducting research about Marco Polo and his Travels. Much of what he wrote, which regarded with suspicion at medieval time was, confirmed by travelers of the 18th and 19th centuries. Marco Polo is receiving deeper respect than before because these marvelous characters and countries he described did actually exist. What's more interesting is that his book becomes great value to Chinese historians, as it helps them understand better some of the most important events of the 13th century, such as the siege of Hsiangyang, the massacre of Ch'angchou, and the attempted conquests of Japan.

Although Marco Polo received little recognition from the geographers of his time, some of the information in his book was incorporated in some important maps of the later Middle Ages, such as the Catalan World Map of 1375, and in the next century it was read with great interest by Henry the Navigator and by Columbus. His system of measuring distances by days' journey has turned out for later generations of explorers to be remarkably accurate. According to Henry Yule, the great geographer: "He was the first traveler to trace a route across the whole longitude of Asia, naming and describing kingdom after kingdom.....".