Marco Polo

Venetian merchant-traveller whose account described Central Asia and China to European readers.

Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler whose late-thirteenth-century journeys and dictated account described routes, courts, commodities, and cities across Eurasia; the surviving book exists in divergent manuscript versions. His principal contribution is a highly influential European account of Mongol-ruled Eurasia and long-distance exchange, mixing close observation, reported information, literary convention, and material that cannot always be independently verified.