Instructions for Marco Polo Cartoon Strip
Create a carton strip with 6 panels based on the biography written below. Captions or speech bubbles for the comic
strip should contain the following terms: Venice, Kublai Khan, wondrous sites, cities at war, Rustichello, and Il Milione.
Below is an example of what the first panel might look like.
Venice
Kublai Khan
Wondrous Sites
Cities at War
Rustichello
Il Milione
Marco Polo visits China
Marco Polo, a thirteenth century Italian from the city of Venice, was one of the first Europeans after the fall of the
Roman Empire to journey across Asia to China. Beginning in 1271, Marco accompanied his father and uncle, diamond
merchants who had traveled to China before, on a three-year trip from Palestine to Shang Du in China.
In China Marco Polo found a civilization more advanced than in Europe. At one of the large cities, Marco discovered that
there were 300 baths for public use, with hot and cold water. He saw grand palaces, tree-shaded highways, paved
roads, parks, and fine bridges. Impressed with Marco’s integrity and intelligence, Kublai Khan, who had befriended
Marco’s father and uncle on their first journey to China, appointed Marco as commissioner to the imperial council in
1277. Later Marco was appointed governor of the Chinese city of Hangzhou. These positions allowed him to travel to
such faraway places as Tibet, India, Burma, and eastern china, where he saw other wondrous sights, such as cloth that
would not burn (asbestos), black stones that would burn (coal), and paper money.
Homesick, Marco Polo returned to Venice in 1295 and found the city at war with Genoa. Polo acted as the commander
of a Venetian galley until he was captured by the Genoese and put in prison. There among the prisoners, jailers, and
visitors he found an audience for his stories of fantastic travels. One of the inmates, Rustichello of Pisa, copied the
narrative from Marco’s dictation. When the resulting book, A Description of the World (now called The Travels of Marco
Polo), was competed in 1298, most people refused to believe it was all true. Marco received the name “I1 Milione,” or
Marco Millions,” because people thought his claims about Asia – its size, its wealth, its population – were exaggerated.
On his deathbed in 1324, a priest begged Marco to admit that much of A Description of the World was false; otherwise
he would die a liar. Marco allegedly replied, “I never told half of what I saw!” It was not until the twentieth century
scholars confirmed much of what appeared in his book that it was recognized that Polo had accurately described the
culture of Yuan China.