Marco Polo sets off for Asia

The story

Venetian merchants at the court of the Great Khan

In the 1200s Asia was almost unknown to Europeans. Then a people of nomadic horsemen, the Mongols, led by Genghis Khan and his descendants, conquered an immense empire, from China to Russia, and made the roads of Asia safer: for a few decades a traveller could go from one side of the continent to the other with relative peace of mind. Merchants and missionaries took advantage of this.

Among them were two Venetian brothers, Niccolò and Matteo Polo. Around 1260 they set out from Constantinople to trade, pushed on into Central Asia and reached the court of the Great Khan Kublai, grandson of Genghis Khan and emperor of China. Kublai received them with curiosity and asked them to return with an ambassador of the pope and with oil from the lamp of the Holy Sepulchre. In 1269 they were back in Venice.

The journey

Marco, Niccolò's son, was born in Venice in 1254. His father had met him only when he was grown up, because he had left before he was born. In 1271, when Marco was seventeen, the three Polos set out again from Venice for China. They passed through Acre, Anatolia, Persia, the desert, the Pamir mountains and the oases of the Silk Road. The journey lasted more than three years: they stopped at Kashgar and Dunhuang and at last, around 1275, reached Kublai's summer palace.

Marco was a bright young man, learned the languages and customs of the Mongols, and made himself valued by the khan. He stayed at his court for about seventeen years, and was sent on missions to various parts of the empire, perhaps as an inspector or official. He saw enormous cities, such as Hangzhou, canals, bridges, markets and ships bigger than European ones.

The return

In 1291-1292 the Polos obtained permission to return: they were to escort a Mongol princess, Kökečin, who was going to marry a prince of Persia. They set out by sea with a fleet, passing Sumatra, Ceylon and India, a voyage lasting over two years, during which many of the crew died. After leaving the princess in Persia, they returned to Venice in 1295, after twenty-four years away. It is said that nobody recognised them, so changed were they.

The book

A few years later, in 1298, Marco was perhaps among the fighters in the naval battle of Curzola, between Venice and Genoa, and was taken prisoner by the Genoese. In prison in Genoa he met a writer from Pisa, Rustichello, to whom he dictated his memories. From this came “The Travels of Marco Polo” (in Italian “Il Milione”), originally titled “Devisement du monde”, that is, “Description of the World”, written in Old French. The book describes the cities, peoples and products of Asia, paper money, coal that burns like wood, the postal service with relay horses, the spice islands and Japan, which he called Cipangu.

The book was a great success, and was copied in hundreds of manuscripts and translated into many languages. Many people, however, judged it exaggerated. It is said that on his deathbed, in 1324, Marco declared that he had not told half of what he had seen.

Did he really see everything?

Even today some scholars doubt that Marco reached China: in the book the Great Wall, tea, printing with type and chopsticks are missing. Others reply that many details are accurate and that the book contains information that nobody in Europe could have invented. Most historians think he really was in Asia, even if he perhaps reported many things heard from others.