Poster - Marco Polo

Among the most famous travellers of all time is surely Marco Polo (1254-1324). Belonging to a family of merchants, he left for China in 1271 - at the age of 17 - together with his father Niccolò and uncle Matteo. He stayed away from home for almost 24 years, most of them at the court of the Mongol emperor Qublai Khan, on whose behalf he carried out various tasks, including diplomatic ones. Marco Polo went down in history because after having spent a long time in China, on his return he collected in a kind of diary all his extraordinary experiences in the then unknown Far East. He was helped in this by a fellow prisoner (he had in fact been captured by the Genoese during a battle off the Curzolari islands), Rustichello da Pisa, who collected his memoirs in a long writing that became a book entitled 'Il Milione'. The tales of those distant times have travelled down the centuries to us.

Size 100x70 cm.