Exploring the medieval world with Marco Polo

Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. You may be familiar with the name Marco Polo, the 13th-century Venetian merchant who traveled through Asia along the Silk Road and spent time at the court of the Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan. Famously, he documented his experiences in a detailed account that's inspired many travelers since. In today's episode, Emily Briffitt speaks to Sharon Kinoshita to follow in Polo's footsteps, exploring the medieval world through his eyes. Marco Polo is a name that I'm sure many of our listeners will have heard of.

But how much do we actually know about the man himself? We actually know tantalizingly little about Marco Polo. He left, you know, very few documents, there are very few points in the historical record from his lifetime. He left a will, so we know what he had at his death, and then there are several legal type papers, contracts and so forth, less from him than from members of his family during his lifetime.

But aside from that, we know very little, which is, I think, why it's uh blank slate that imaginative novelists and filmmakers have been able to fill in with all sorts of romantic adventures about his time away traveling in Asia. Now, I was going to ask you to provide a brief biography to him. This is, from what you've said, going to be very brief. Could you just introduce us to what we do know about Marco Bailey? Well, we know that he was born in about 1254 and that he died in 1324.

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