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Europe and the Mediterranean in the 13th centuryTravel and discovery

Travels of Marco Polo

The young Marco Polo set out from Venice with his father and uncle for the court of Kublai Khan, lived for some seventeen years in Yuan China and returned home by sea around southern Asia.

Date
1271–1295year known · duration: ≈ 24 years
Place
Beijingtoday: Beijing, China · East Asia
Route
Venice → Adriatic Sea → Strait of Otranto → Ionian Sea → Cape Matapan → South of Kythira → Aegean Sea → South of Rhodes → Acre → Syrian coast → Laiazzo (Ayas) → Sivas → Erzurum → Tabriz → Saveh → Yazd → Kerman → Hormuz (old town on the mainland) → Kerman → Quhistan → Balkh → Badakhshan → Pamirs → Kashgar → Yarkand → Khotan → Cherchen → Lop → Shazhou (Dunhuang) → Ganzhou → Shangdu (Xanadu) → Beijing → Quanzhou (Zaiton) → South China Sea → Champa → South of Indochina → Singapore Strait → Strait of Malacca → Samudra (Sumatra) → North of Sumatra → Ceylon → Kollam (Quilon) → Malabar Coast → Arabian Sea → Gulf of Oman → Hormuz (old town on the mainland) → Kerman → Yazd → Saveh → Tabriz → Erzurum → Trebizond → North of Sinop → Bosporus → Constantinople → Dardanelles → Aegean Sea → Cape Malea → Cape Matapan → Ionian Sea → Strait of Otranto → Adriatic Sea → Venice
Participants
Marco Polo, Kublai Khan, Yuan dynasty, Republic of Venice
Threads
Europe and the Mediterranean in the 13th century
Also known as
Книга о разнообразии мира; Il Milione

The travelers sailed to Acre and Lesser Armenia and then went overland across the Armenian Highlands, Iran, the Pamirs and Kashgaria; in 1275 they reached Shazhou (Dunhuang) and the khan’s summer residence at Shangdu. Marco carried out missions for Kublai in various parts of China. In 1291 or 1292 the Polos sailed from Quanzhou, escorting a Mongol bride for the Ilkhan, and by way of Sumatra, Ceylon and Hormuz returned to Venice in 1295.

Marco’s account, written down by Rustichello da Pisa when both were held captive in Genoa — The Description of the World — shaped European ideas about Asia for centuries. The route on the map is an approximate reconstruction.

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Connections

Related events

  • Proclamation of the Yuan dynasty1271 · East AsiaThe Polos served at the court of Kublai, founder of the Yuan dynasty
  • First voyage of Christopher Columbus3 August 1492 – 15 March 1493 · Western and Central EuropeMarco Polo’s descriptions of Cathay and Cipangu fed the search for a western route to Asia; Columbus’s annotated copy of Polo’s book is kept in Seville
  • Bento de Góis’s journey from India to Chinabetween October 1602 and February 1603 – 11 April 1607 · Central and Northern AsiaGóis’s journey showed that the Cathay described by Marco Polo was China

Same participants

Same place

Adjacent events in the thread

Meanwhile in the world

Other regions, within a year of this event

Western and Central Europe

Eastern Europe

Middle East and Egypt

Africa

South Asia

Southeast Asia and Oceania

North America

The same period

13th century

Sources

  1. Wikipedia (English): Marco Polo
  2. Wikipedia (English): The Travels of Marco Polo
  3. Wikipedia (Russian): Поло, Марко
  4. Wikipedia (Russian): Книга чудес света
  5. Larner J. Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World. — New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.