Venice to Kublai Khan's Court and Back: Weighing the Evidence That Marco Polo Reached China

Did Marco Polo really go to China? The short answer from most modern historians is yes. Marco Polo (c. 1254–1324) was a Venetian merchant who travelled through Asia along the Silk Road between 1271 and 1295, and the book of his travels gave Europeans their first comprehensive look at China under the Mongol Yuan dynasty. Doubts about his story are as old as the book itself, and one 1995 book even argued he never got further east than Persia. But detailed studies of what he wrote about Chinese paper money, salt production and a Mongol princess's wedding voyage have convinced most specialists that he was there, even if he or his co-author polished the story and inflated his own importance. This post walks through his life, what the journey actually involved, why people doubted him, why the doubters lost the argument, and what his name still means today.

A merchant's son who met his father at fifteen

Marco was born around 1254 in Venice, although the exact date and place are not recorded in any archive. His father Niccolò and his uncle Maffeo were travelling merchants who had already left on a long trading trip before he was born. While they were away, Marco's mother died, and he was raised by an aunt and uncle. He received a practical merchant's education, learning about foreign currency, valuing goods and handling cargo ships, but he learned little or no Latin.

His father and uncle, meanwhile, had gone much further than anyone at home expected. Their own trip had taken them across Asia to the court of Kublai Khan, the Mongol ruler who founded the Yuan dynasty in China. Kublai questioned them closely about European law, politics and the Church, then sent them home with a letter for the Pope asking for a hundred educated Christians and for oil from the lamp in Jerusalem. When the brothers finally returned to Venice in 1269, Marco was about fifteen and met his father for the first time.

The long road east, 1271–1275

In 1271, when Marco was seventeen, the three Polos set out together. They sailed to Acre and then rode camels to the Persian port of Hormuz, hoping to sail straight to China, but the ships there did not look seaworthy, so they went overland along the Silk Road instead. The journey was dangerous. At one point the caravan they had joined was ambushed by bandits who used a sandstorm as cover; the Polos escaped, but many of their companions were killed or enslaved.

About three and a half years after leaving Venice, they reached Kublai's summer palace at Shangdu and handed over the holy oil and the papal letters. Scholars place their arrival somewhere between 1271 and 1275. It is worth pausing on how unusual this was. The Polos were not soldiers or ambassadors with an army behind them. They were family traders who had turned a commercial trip into a diplomatic errand between two of the most powerful rulers of their age.

Seventeen years in the service of Kublai Khan

According to the book, Kublai was impressed by the young Venetian's intelligence and modesty. Marco knew four languages, and he was sent on missions across the empire and into Southeast Asia, including places that are now Myanmar, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. He later said he entertained the Khan with stories of the lands he had seen, and in total he lived in the emperor's territory for about seventeen years.

Kublai valued the Polos so much that he refused several times to let them leave. The family began to worry that if the old ruler died, his rivals might turn on foreigners who had been close to him. Their chance came around 1291, when the ruler of Persia sent envoys asking for a bride, and the Polos were allowed to escort the princess Kököchin by sea. The fleet of fourteen junks sailed from Zaitun in southern China past Sumatra and around the tip of India to Hormuz. The voyage took about two years, and of roughly six hundred passengers, only eighteen are said to have survived. From Persia the Polos went overland to Trebizond on the Black Sea and finally reached Venice in 1295, twenty-four years after they had left.

A book written in a Genoese prison

Venice was at war with Genoa when Marco came home. He joined the fighting, was captured, probably in a skirmish in 1296, and spent time as a prisoner. There he dictated his memories to a fellow prisoner, Rustichello da Pisa, a professional writer of romances. The book they produced was originally called Devisement du Monde or Livre des Merveilles du Monde, the "Description" or "Book of the Marvels of the World", and in Italy it became known as Il Milione. It is organised in four parts covering the Middle East and Central Asia, China and Kublai's court, the coasts of Japan, India, Southeast Asia and East Africa, and finally the wars of the Mongols and the far north.

There is no single authoritative text. About 150 manuscripts survive in many languages, and they differ significantly because errors crept in each time the book was copied or translated by hand. Released in 1299, Marco went back to Venice, became a wealthy merchant, married Donata Badoèr and had three daughters. He died in January 1324 and was buried at the church of San Lorenzo. His will even freed a Tartar servant named Peter, who may have come with him from Asia.

Why people doubted him

Scepticism started early. Some medieval readers treated the book as a romance, partly because its picture of a rich, organised China clashed with other travellers who had described the Mongols as barbarians from "some other world". A Dominican writer reported that on his deathbed Marco insisted he had told only half of what he had seen.

Later critics pointed to what the book leaves out. Polo describes paper money and the burning of coal, but he never mentions the Great Wall, tea, Chinese characters, chopsticks or foot-binding. In 1995 the historian Frances Wood published Did Marco Polo Go to China?, arguing that he may have got no further than Constantinople and the Black Sea and borrowed his material from Persian sources and other travellers. No Chinese source clearly names him, and the book contains real mistakes. It claims the Polos helped build siege engines at Xiangyang, but that siege ended in 1273, before Marco had even arrived, and it gives the famous bridge near Beijing twenty-four arches instead of eleven or thirteen.

The co-author is part of the puzzle too. Scholars have shown that some passages were lifted almost word for word from Rustichello's earlier Arthurian romance, and the scene of Marco's arrival at Kublai's court closely mirrors Tristan arriving at Camelot. It is quite possible that the romance writer added the dramatic and marvellous touches that medieval readers expected.

Why most historians now say he was there

The defenders have the stronger case. The missing Great Wall is less strange than it sounds: the wall most people picture today is a Ming dynasty structure built about two centuries after Polo, and the Mongols, who were themselves the northern invaders, had no reason to maintain older fortifications. Other visitors to Yuan China did not mention a wall either. Tea and chopsticks are also missing from other foreign travellers' accounts of the same period.

The positive evidence is more striking. In 2012 the sinologist Hans Ulrich Vogel analysed Polo's descriptions of Chinese currency, salt production and salt revenues. He found details, such as the size and shape of paper notes, the use of seals and the use of cowry shells in Yunnan, that no other Western, Arab or Persian source gives and that match archaeological finds and Chinese records. The princess's voyage is confirmed by independent Persian and Chinese sources, and Polo's version even explains why only one of the three envoys appears in the Persian record: according to him, the other two died on the way. The economic historian Mark Elvin concluded that the book is, in essence, authentic and can be trusted in broad terms when used with care.

What remains open is not whether he went, but how important he was. Some historians think he exaggerated his status, including the claim that he "ruled" the city of Yangzhou for three years; the sinologist Paul Pelliot suggested he may have held a post in the salt administration there instead. Different manuscripts disagree on whether he governed the city or simply stayed there, which shows how much hand copying could change a story.

What his book changed

Polo was not the first European to reach China, but he was the first to leave a detailed account that many people read. It included the first Western record of porcelain, gunpowder, paper money and several Asian plants and animals. The book influenced European map-making, including the Catalan Atlas and the Fra Mauro map, and Christopher Columbus owned a copy that he filled with handwritten notes.

Some popular stories about him are simply wrong. The idea that he brought pasta back from China is a twentieth-century marketing myth; pasta was eaten in Italy long before his journey. His real legacy is more interesting than the legend. He showed medieval Europe that the world beyond its borders was larger, richer and better organised than many readers wanted to believe. Today a wild sheep from the Pamirs, a nineteenth-century clipper ship and Venice's airport all carry his name.

Learn with Marco Polo: English phrases

Phrase	Meaning	Example
to set out	to start a long journey	They set out for Asia in 1271.
a tall tale	a story that is hard to believe	His neighbours thought the book was full of tall tales.
to take something with a grain of salt	to doubt part of what you hear	Take travel stories with a grain of salt.
the balance of evidence	what most of the proof points to	The balance of evidence says he reached China.
to stretch the truth	to exaggerate	He may have stretched the truth about his job.

Try this: Write three English sentences about a trip you took, and use "set out" and "stretch the truth" at least once each.