Marco Polo's journey
overland and sea journey · 1271 AD–1295 AD
Marco Polo left Venice in 1271 with his father Niccolò and uncle Maffeo, crossed Persia and Central Asia to the court of Kublai Khan, served the Yuan for about seventeen years, and returned by sea in 1291–1295 escorting a Mongol princess to Persia. The only account is his own Travels, dictated in a Genoese prison in 1298. Its route is reconstructed from the places it describes; most dates along the way are scholarly estimates, and whether every place described was actually visited is debated.
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Recorded boundaries
| Period | Control | Confidence | Evidence | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1271 AD | — | medium confidence | no observation date recorded | Set out from Venice. Reached Acre → Ayas. Received letters from the newly elected Pope Gregory X for Kublai Khan. |
| 1272 AD | — | low confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Hormuz. The Polos meant to go on by sea, but judged the ships unseaworthy and turned back north. |
| 1273 AD | — | low confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Badakhshan. Marco fell ill and recovered in the mountain air here, a stay the Travels puts at about a year. |
| 1274 AD | — | medium confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Kashgar → Khotan → Dunhuang. |
| 1275 AD–1290 AD | — | medium confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Shangdu → Khanbaliq. Kublai Khan's summer capital, Coleridge's Xanadu. Arrival is usually dated to the summer of 1275. The Yuan capital, now Beijing. The Polos stayed in Kublai's service for about seventeen years. Marco's missions inside China are not mapped: the Travels gives neither dates nor firm routes for them. |
| 1291 AD–1292 AD | — | medium confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Quanzhou → Champa → Samudra. Sailed with a fleet escorting the princess Kököchin, promised as a bride to the Ilkhan Arghun of Persia. Some reconstructions date the departure to late 1290. Waited about five months on Sumatra for the monsoon to turn. |
| 1293 AD–1294 AD | — | medium confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Hormuz → Tabriz. The voyage took about two years and many of the party died on it. Arghun had died during the voyage, so Kököchin was married to his son Ghazan instead. |
| 1295 AD | — | high confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Venice. |
Each row is a snapshot the source recorded, not a continuous history. The period between two observations is an inference this atlas shows rather than hides.
Sources
- Marco Polo; translated and edited by Henry Yule, revised by Henri Cordier, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian, concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, (1903)
- Hans Ulrich Vogel, Marco Polo Was in China: New Evidence from Currencies, Salts and Revenues, (2013)