Marco said farewell to Venice aged around 17. He would be in his forties before he laid eyes on the city again
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“Great Princes, Emperors, and Kings, Dukes and Marquises, Counts, Knights, and Burgesses, and People of all degrees who desire to get knowledge of the various races of mankind and of the diversities of the sundry regions of the World, take this book and cause it to be read to you.”
From the opening line of the prologue, Marco Polo had lofty ambitions for the readership of his great work. Yes, those words reflected a certain pomp and intentionally inflated grandeur, but he did have cause to aim high. His book charted the journey he made as a merchant from Venice to China and back again - spanning 24 years and tens of thousands of miles - plus his time in the employ of the leader of the Mongols, and described places, cultures, customs and peoples that, to Europeans, were new and so exotic that they seemed beyond belief.