Who they were
He was born in Venice in 1254 into a family already trading beyond the Black Sea: his father Niccolò and his uncle Maffeo had reached the Mongol court before he was old enough to remember them. He left with them at seventeen in 1271, went overland through Persia and the Pamirs, and did not see Venice again for twenty-four years. Not long after his return he was taken prisoner in a sea fight with Genoa, and it was in a Genoese cell that he dictated his account to a fellow prisoner, the romance writer Rustichello of Pisa.
What they did
He traveled overland to Asia and, by his own account, spent years in the service of Kublai Khan before returning to Venice around 1295. His account, The Travels of Marco Polo, dictated while a prisoner of war, described the wealth and wonders of Asia to European readers.
Legacy
The book shaped European ideas of Asia for centuries and is said to have inspired later explorers, including Columbus, though some scholars question how much Polo saw firsthand. Whatever the truth of its details, the book’s popularity is not in doubt.