Marco Polo · 1300 · global

The most famous travel book ever written, dictated by the Venetian merchant Marco Polo around 1300. It follows his epic journey to the court of Kublai Khan and back: out along the Silk Road overland through Persia, the Pamirs and the Gobi to Cathay, where he served the Great Khan for some seventeen years, and home again by sea around the whole of southern Asia. This route traces the full loop, from his departure in 1271 to his return in 1295.

1. 1
   Venice

   In 1271 the seventeen-year-old Marco Polo sets out from Venice with his father Niccolo and uncle Maffeo, merchants who have already once journeyed to the court of the Great Khan. They carry letters and gifts from the new Pope to Kublai, and begin what will become a twenty-four-year journey to the far side of the known world and back.

2. 2
   Acre

   The Polos sail the length of the Mediterranean to Acre, the great Crusader port of the Holy Land, where they pause for some months and confer with the papal legate who will shortly become Pope. From here their long overland road into Asia begins.

3. 3
   Ayas

   At the Cilician port of Ayas, which Marco calls Laiazzo, on the Gulf of Iskenderun, the travellers leave the sea and strike inland. This bustling market town is the western gateway of the caravan routes, where the goods of the East are traded for those of Europe.

4. 4
   Tabriz

   Through the mountains of eastern Anatolia and Armenia, past the peak where Marco was told Noah's Ark still rests, the Polos reach Tabriz in Persia, a rich and cosmopolitan trading city where merchants gather from India, Baghdad and far beyond and precious stones change hands in the bazaars.

5. 5
   Hormuz

   Heading south through the Persian deserts by way of Yazd and Kerman, the travellers come down to Hormuz on the Persian Gulf, meaning to take ship straight for China. But the vessels there, sewn together with coconut twine rather than nailed, strike them as far too flimsy for the open ocean, and they turn back to go by land instead.

6. 6
   Balkh

   Retracing their steps to Kerman and crossing the bleak, bandit-haunted deserts of Khorasan, the Polos push north-east into Afghanistan to Balkh, once a city of marble palaces and now half-ruined by the armies of Genghis Khan. In nearby Badakhshan Marco falls ill and recovers over many months in the high clean air.

7. 7
   Kashgar

   The hardest stage of all takes them up into the Pamirs, the towering range Marco is the first European to describe and which he is told is the highest place in the world. Descending the far side, they reach Kashgar, an oasis city on the western rim of the great Taklamakan, and join the main Silk Road.

8. 8
   Dunhuang

   Following the chain of oasis towns along the southern edge of the Taklamakan, Yarkand and Khotan and Cherchen, the travellers skirt the desert to Lop and then face the dreaded Gobi, where Marco writes of spirits that call travellers by name to lure them from the track. Beyond it lies Dunhuang, on the threshold of Cathay.

9. 9
   Xanadu

   Up the Hexi Corridor and across the grasslands they finally reach Shangdu, the summer capital later immortalised as Xanadu. Here, in 1275, after three and a half years on the road, the Polos are received by Kublai Khan amid a marble pleasure-palace, parks stocked with game, gilded halls, and a stud of thousands of white horses.

10. 10
    Beijing

    At Khanbaliq, the Great Khan's winter capital on the site of modern Beijing, Marco enters Kublai's service. For some seventeen years he serves as envoy and official, sent on missions across the empire to Yunnan, the south, and the vast city of Quinsai, marvelling at the Khan's paper money, courier posts and teeming cities.

11. 11
    Quanzhou

    When at last the ageing Polos are allowed to leave, it is by escorting a Mongol princess sent as a bride to Persia. In 1292 the party sails from Zaitun, the southern port Marco rates among the greatest harbours on Earth, in a fleet of fourteen ships, beginning the long voyage home by sea.

12. 12
    Sumatra

    Down through the South China Sea past Champa and Singapore the fleet sails to Sumatra, where the travellers wait out months of contrary monsoon. Marco describes its kingdoms and strange creatures, the unicorn that is really the rhinoceros, all set down with a merchant's careful eye.

13. 13
    Ceylon

    Across the Bay of Bengal lies Ceylon, the island Marco thought the finest of its size in all the world, famed for its rubies and sapphires and for the sacred mountain where, he reports, the footprint of Adam, or of the Buddha, is venerated upon the peak.

14. 14
    Quilon

    Rounding the southern tip of India, the voyagers sail up the Malabar Coast, the pepper country, putting in along the kingdoms of the south. Marco records the diving for pearls, the spices and the trade, the customs and faiths of a coast that supplies the markets of half the world.

15. 15
    Hormuz (return)

    Across the open Arabian Sea the fleet reaches Hormuz again, this time from the seaward side. The voyage has been terrible: of some six hundred souls who set out, only eighteen survive, though all three Polos are among them. Their charge delivered, they turn for home overland.

16. 16
    Trebizond

    Travelling up through Persia once more, past Tabriz, the Polos cross Armenia to Trebizond, the Black Sea port that is the western end of the caravan roads. Here, robbed of much of their remaining wealth, they take ship for the last leg of the journey.

17. 17
    Venice (return)

    By way of Constantinople the travellers sail home, reaching Venice in 1295 after twenty-four years away, so changed and so outlandishly dressed that their own household scarcely knows them. Marco's account of all he saw, set down a few years later, will become the most influential travel book ever written.