Marco Polo (1254-1324)

Marco Polo's famous The Travels of Marco Polo (c. 1298) tells of the journeys undertaken by the renowned Venetian merchant and his family to the court of the Grand Khan̄ Qūbīlāy, ruler of the Mongol Empire, where Marco stayed for 17 years. A pillar of travel literature, The Travels of Marco Polo was dictated to his travelling companion Rustichello, who transcribed it into French-Italian, during a period of imprisonment in Genoa. The result is a rich compendium of detailed information and observations that constituted one of the first geographical encyclopaedias in medieval history.