46 Fun Facts About Marco Polo

Which real animal did Marco Polo describe in his book as a unicorn?

A rhinoceros. Polo grumbled that the mud-loving beast was ugly and nothing like the unicorn of the old stories, which a maiden was supposed to be able to tame.

Which Mongol ruler's court received the Polos in China?

Kublai Khan. Genghis Khan's grandson found the Polos so useful that he refused several times to let them go home.

According to legend, what spilled out when the returning Polos ripped open the shabby clothes they had travelled in?

Jewels. In the tale the Polos had turned their fortune into rubies, sapphires and emeralds and sewn them into the seams, because gold was too heavy to carry home across Asia.

Marco Polo first met his father at about 15, after Niccolò spent years doing what?

Trading in Asia. Niccolò left before Marco was born and came home to learn that his wife had died and that he had a teenage son.

In the Persian city of Saveh, Marco Polo said he was shown the tombs of which biblical figures?

The Three Wise Men. Polo wrote that their bodies lay in three fine tombs with hair and beards intact, yet the townspeople knew only that three kings were buried there.

Which nickname, now his book's Italian title, is Marco Polo said to have earned by forever talking of the Khan's riches?

Il Milione, 'the Million'. A 16th-century editor wrote that his fellow citizens named him for reckoning the Khan's wealth in millions, though it may be an older family nickname.

Marco Polo's 'Old Man of the Mountain', said to drug recruits and wake them in a garden paradise, led which feared sect?

The Assassins. In Polo's telling the youths believed they had tasted heaven, and would kill or die on command for the chance to get back in.

A churchman the Polos befriended at Acre, Tedaldo Visconti, was elected to which office soon after they set out?

Pope. He became Gregory X at the end of a papal election that had dragged on for nearly three years, and called the Polos back to Acre to give them letters for the Khan.

The Great Khan asked the elder Polos to bring him holy oil from a lamp burning in which city?

Jerusalem. The lamp burned at the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional tomb of Christ; the Polos collected the oil on their way back east and handed it to the Khan years later.

Why did the Polos travel overland rather than sail from Hormuz to China?

The ships there were not seaworthy. Polo wrote that Hormuz vessels had no iron nails and were stitched together with coconut-husk twine, and that many of them were lost.

What job did Marco Polo say he did for the Great Khan?

Roving envoy. The Khan is said to have enjoyed the lively reports Marco brought back from each mission, and kept sending him to the far corners of the empire.

Marco Polo reported that cloth woven from asbestos was the supposed fur of which legendary fire-dwelling creature?

The salamander. Polo insisted that no animal can live in fire: the cloth was spun from a fibre dug out of a mountain, and was cleaned by throwing it into the flames.

Whom did the Mongol princess the Polos escorted marry on finding her betrothed dead?

His son. Persia's ruler Arghun had asked the Khan for a bride from his late wife's family; he died before she arrived, so Kököchin was married to Ghazan instead.

Marco Polo passed on sailors' tales of which giant bird, said to be strong enough to carry off an elephant?

The roc. Polo wrote that it dropped its prey from a height to smash it, and that men sent by the Khan came home with one of its giant feathers.

Marco Polo described the Great Khan's 'yamb', a chain of some 10,000 stations across the empire, which served as what?

Postal relay posts. Polo wrote that couriers found fresh horses waiting every 25 to 30 miles, so the Khan's orders crossed the empire far faster than any single rider could carry them.

Which rival republic was at war with the Polos' home city when Marco returned in 1295?

Genoa. Polo is said to have joined the fighting in command of a war galley, and the two republics did not make peace until 1299.

Where was Marco Polo when he dictated his travels to the romance writer Rustichello?

In prison. Polo shared his captivity with Rustichello, a professional storyteller, who dressed the traveller's account in the style of a court romance.

In which language did Rustichello write down the original text of Marco Polo's book?

Franco-Venetian, a literary French laced with Italian forms. French was the fashionable language of romance, and Rustichello had already written tales of chivalry in it.

Marco Polo's 'Cambaluc', the Great Khan's winter capital, stood on the site of which modern city?

Beijing. Cambaluc is Polo's spelling of Khanbaliq, 'the Khan's city'; the court spent the cold months there and rode north to Shangdu for the summer.

Where is the children's call-and-response game Marco Polo, a form of tag, usually played?

In a swimming pool. It is blind man's buff played in water, and nobody has convincingly explained why its players shout the explorer's name.

Which everyday Chinese fuel did Marco Polo describe as a marvel, because it was little known in his part of Europe?

Coal. Polo wrote of black stones dug from the mountains that burned like firewood, stayed alight until morning and cost less than wood.

What did Marco Polo's will grant Peter, a Tartar servant in his household, along with a gift of 100 lire?

His freedom. The will releases Peter 'from all bondage', as completely, Polo adds, as he prays God will release his own soul from sin.

What became of Marco Polo's grave in Venice's church of San Lorenzo?

Lost without trace. Polo's will asked for burial at San Lorenzo, but the old church was later pulled down and rebuilt, and neither his tomb nor his remains can be found today.

According to Jacopo d'Acqui, what did Marco Polo insist on his deathbed?

He had told only half of it. Friends at his bedside are said to have urged the dying man to take back the book's tall tales; he answered that he had left out half of what he saw.

Which fabric is usually said to take its name from a city in Iraq whose cloth merchants Marco Polo described?

Muslin, which dictionaries trace to Mosul. Polo's 'mosolins' were rich cloths of silk and gold, though; only later did the word come to mean plain cotton.

What did the Great Khan give the Polos to guarantee them horses, lodging and escorts across his empire?

A tablet of gold. Such passes, called paizas, bore an inscription invoking the Khan's name and threatening anyone who failed to obey, so the Polos crossed Asia as his honoured guests.

In Marco Polo's telling, the Mongols starved Baghdad's last caliph by locking him up with only what?

His own treasure. In the story the Mongol prince Hulagu tells him to eat his gold, since he had loved it too much to spend it on soldiers to defend the city.

Which Chinese practice, a novelty to Europeans, did Marco Polo describe at length in his book?

Paper money. Polo wrote that the Khan's notes were made from mulberry bark and stamped with his seal, and that nobody dared refuse them on pain of death.

Which famous structure did Marco Polo fail to mention, as 17th-century sceptics first noted?

The Great Wall of China. The stone wall visitors walk today was built by the Ming dynasty, some two centuries after Polo left, and the Mongols had no use for a barrier against themselves.

Frances Wood of the British Library argued in a 1995 book that Marco Polo had never done what?

Reached China. Wood argued that he got no further than Persia, or even the Black Sea, and pieced his account together from what Persian travellers and books told him.

Which everyday Chinese items are among those Marco Polo never mentions?

Tea and chopsticks. Defenders point out that other foreign visitors of the time left them out too, and that tea was more a Chinese habit than a Mongol one.

In some versions of his book, Marco Polo spends three years in Yangzhou holding which office?

Governor. No Chinese record mentions him, and other manuscripts say only that he lived there, so the grand title may be a copyist's slip or his co-writer's polish.

In one of his book's tallest tales, Marco Polo gave the people of the Andaman Islands the heads of which animals?

Dogs. He likened their faces to big mastiffs, but dog-headed men had been a stock marvel of travellers' tales ever since the ancient Greeks placed them in India.

Marco Polo's book claims the Polos helped take the Chinese city of Xiangyang by building what?

Catapults. The boast cannot be true: the city fell in 1273, before the Polos' caravan had arrived, and Chinese records credit the stone-throwers to engineers sent from Persia.

A 2012 study found that Marco Polo's account of which Chinese state monopoly matches Chinese records in detail?

Salt. Polo tells how workers at Changlu heaped up salty earth, washed water through it and boiled the brine in iron cauldrons, a method Hans Ulrich Vogel matched to Yuan-era documents.

Which Chinese shipbuilding feature did Marco Polo note and want to share with his fellow Venetians?

Watertight compartments. Polo wrote that big junks had about thirteen, so that a hull holed by a rock or a hungry whale flooded one hold and stayed afloat.

Which later explorer carried an annotated copy of Marco Polo's book among his belongings?

Christopher Columbus. He scribbled notes in the margins of his copy, and sailed west in 1492 hoping to reach the rich lands Polo had described.

Marco Polo wrote that which fabled Christian king of the East had been killed in battle by Genghis Khan?

Prester John. Polo turned the fabled priest-king into a steppe chief who went to war, and died, for refusing Genghis his daughter's hand.

A popular myth credits Marco Polo with bringing which food home to Italy from China?

Pasta. Italians were eating it long before Polo's day: about a century earlier, the geographer al-Idrisi had described pasta being made in Sicily.

Which animal, which Marco Polo described on his way across the Pamir mountains, is named after him?

A wild sheep. Polo wrote that its horns were 'good six palms' long, and that shepherds made them into bowls and stacked them into pens for their flocks.

On which island did the Polos' fleet, sailing home from China, wait months for the winds to turn?

Sumatra. Polo says the weather held them there for five months, one reason the voyage from China to Persia took about two years.

Which author made Marco Polo a pivotal character in the 1972 novel Invisible Cities?

Italo Calvino. In the novel Polo describes dozens of fantastical cities to the emperor, then admits that every one of them says something about his own home town.

Which video game ties its hunt for the Cintamani Stone to Marco Polo's 1292 voyage from China?

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Nathan Drake begins the game among a band of thieves hunting the treasure fleet that, in its story, Polo lost on that voyage.

Which streaming service made a 2014–16 drama series about Marco Polo's early years at the Mongol court?

Netflix. The lavish epic was cancelled after two seasons, having reportedly lost the company about $200 million.

A seven-part 1964 serial titled Marco Polo was an early adventure in which British TV series?

Doctor Who. The Doctor's party crosses the Pamirs and the Gobi with Polo's caravan, and ends by foiling a warlord's plot to murder the emperor.

The opening lines of Marco Polo's book were lifted by his co-writer from his own earlier romance about which hero?

King Arthur. Rustichello had compiled a book of Round Table tales years before, and he reused its address to 'emperors and kings, dukes and marquises' to open the traveller's story.