Marco Polo Marco Polo, merchant and traveler, was born in Venice in 1254. In 1269, when Mark was 15 years old, they returned to Venice his father Niccolò and his uncle Matteo, left for the East several years ago. They had pledged to start early to China, where the emperor of China Kublai Khan was waiting for them with a hundred wise Westerners that the Pope would have to send. Since the new Pontiff was slow to be elected after two years of waiting, in 1271, the brothers and the young Marco Polo, now seventeen, decided to go to the East.
After an odyssey lasting two years with after going through Palestine, Persia, Central Asia, in 1274, came to Khanbalik (today's Beijing), where they were received with great kindness. Mark was at the court of Kublai Khan for 17 years, carrying out delicate missions and important positions in various regions of the empire: Tibet, Burma and Indochina. For three years he held the administration of Yangzhou city and got to know very well the life and customs of the local people. Mark speaks of this period in detail, describing a large number of locations and events in the history of the empire of China at that time, customs and beliefs, palaces and banquets, princes and peoples.
In 1292 the Pole took the opportunity of a naval expedition to Persia to return home.Drive along the coasts of Southeast Asia, crossed the Straits of Malacca, arrived in India and from there to Persia and then finally they returned to Venice (1295) through the Black Sea and Constantinople. After his return to Venice took part in the naval battle between Venice and Genoa in the island of Korcula, on the Dalmatian coast, where he was taken prisoner by the Genoese September 7, 1298. In prison he met Rustichello from Pisa, which he dictated his memoirs that, transcribed in French, were published under the title Livre des merveilles du monde (The Book of the Wonders of the World). The work, which was translated into several languages and was known in Italy under the title Il Milione (from Emilione, an epithet of the Polo family), for a long time remained the only source of news on East Asia. Released from prison in 1299 and returned to his Venice, where he died in 1324 at age 70. He was buried in San Lorenzo. Of him the German geographer Alexander von Humboldt wrote that it was "the greatest explorer of all time Earth and all countries."
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