Marco Polo
1254–1324 · Venetian merchant whose account of China and the court of Kublai Khan amazed Europe.
Marco Polo was born in Venice into a family of merchants. His father Niccolò and uncle Maffeo had already traveled to China, where they met the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan. In 1271, when Marco was seventeen, he set out with them on a new journey across Persia, the Pamir mountains and the Gobi Desert along the Silk Road, reaching Kublai's summer capital, Shangdu, about 1275. According to his book, Marco entered the khan's service and traveled widely in China and beyond on official missions for some seventeen years. He described paper money, coal burned for fuel, the postal relay system, and great cities such as Hangzhou. The Polos finally returned home by sea, escorting a Mongol princess to Persia, and reached Venice in 1295. Captured in a war with Genoa, Marco dictated his travels to a fellow prisoner, the writer Rustichello da Pisa. The book was copied widely, though many readers doubted it, and some scholars still debate parts of it. It later inspired Christopher Columbus. Marco married, had three daughters, and died in Venice in 1324.
Marco Polo is also an author in the library: author page and works.
Faith: Faith not well documented. Source: Wikipedia
Key dates
- 1271 Sets out for China
- c. 1275 Reaches the court of Kublai Khan
- 1295 Returns to Venice
- 1298 Dictates his travels in a Genoese prison
- 1324 Dies in Venice
Fun facts
- Back home in Venice he was nicknamed 'Milione' ('Million'), reportedly because he kept saying Kublai Khan's wealth was counted in millions. (Source: Marco Polo (Wikipedia))
Record-breaker
Firsts and records, worded as the sources give them ("first known", "at the time").
- He was not the first European to reach China, but he was the first to leave a detailed account of it, including the first Western record of porcelain, gunpowder and paper money. (Source: Marco Polo (Wikipedia))
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In their words
“But I believe it was God’s pleasure that we should get back in order that people might learn about the things that the world contains.”
Read about them
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Grades 3–5
- Who Was Marco Polo? by Joan Holub (Grosset & Dunlap, 2007; ISBN 9780448445403)
Bookshop.org · Amazon
Grades 6–8
- The Travels of Marco Polo · In the library