Venetian merchant and traveler, teller of The Travels of Marco Polo
A Venetian merchant and traveler. In the thirteenth century he went east along the Silk Road with his father and uncle and, by tradition, lived seventeen years in the China of Kublai Khan’s Yuan dynasty, traveling widely. Back in Venice, he was captured in a war and, in prison, dictated his account of the East — The Travels of Marco Polo. Its depiction of China’s splendor, wealth, and paper money gave Europeans their first glimpse of an East rich beyond belief, deeply stirring later European longing for the wealth of the East — and even, indirectly, giving rise to the Age of Discovery.
The China depicted in The Travels of Marco Polo was splendor and gold everywhere, using a "paper money" Europeans had never heard of. Many contemporaries did not believe him, thinking him a boaster, yet the book became a bestseller, carving the image of a rich East into the European imagination. Two hundred years later, Columbus set sail with a heavily annotated copy of it, bent on finding a new route to this East — and stumbled upon America instead.
Whether Marco Polo really reached China, and how much of the Travels came from firsthand experience versus hearsay, has long been debated by scholars; this site states the dispute.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.