The Travels, Marco Polo

Evoking a remote and long-vanished world with colour and immediacy, Marco's book revolutionized western ideas about the then unknown east and is still one of the greatest travel accounts of all time. Marco Polo's voyages began in 1271 with a visit to China, after which he served the Kublai Khan on numerous diplomatic missions in the far east. His subsequent account of his travels offers a fascinating glimpse of what he encountered abroad: unfamiliar religions, customs and societies; the spices and silks of the east; the precious gems, exotic vegetation and wild beasts of faraway lands.