The Travels of Marco Polo

What it is

This is a travel account describing journeys through Asia in the late 1200s. It was not written by the traveller himself but set down by a writer named Rustichello da Pisa, based on stories told to him by the Venetian traveller Marco Polo. The original manuscripts are lost; the text survives in about 150 later copies in different languages.

Why it matters

The book shaped how medieval and later Europeans imagined Asia, and historians still debate how much of it is first-hand experience and how much is storytelling added by Rustichello. Classrooms often compare it with Ibn Battuta's Rihla, written decades later by a Muslim scholar travelling through much of the same world, to see how two very different travellers described similar regions.

Look closer

• Why might two accounts of the same regions, written by travellers from different cultures, describe different things as remarkable?
• What does it mean that the book was dictated to another writer rather than written by the traveller himself?
• Why have historians doubted parts of this account, and how might this compare to doubts about other travel writers?