The Travels of Marco Polo

Translated by William Marsden (from the Italian of Giambattista Ramusios printed edition of 1553)


With an Introduction by Benjamin Colbert


Marco Polo (1254-1329) has achieved an almost archetypal status as a traveller, and his Travels is one of the first great travel books of Western literature, outside the ancient world. The Travels recounts Polos journey to the eastern court of Kublai Khan, the chieftain of the Mongol empire which covered the Asian continent, but which was almost unknown to Polos contemporaries. Encompassing a twenty-four year period from 1721, Polos account details his travels in the service of the empire, from Beijing to northern India and ends with the remarkable story of Polos return voyage from the Chinese port of Amoy to the Persian Gulf. Alternately factual and fantastic, Polos prose at once reveals the medieval imaginations limits, and captures the wonder of subsequent travel writers when faced with the unfamiliar, the exotic or the unknown.