Christopher Columbus' 1492 Voyage Guided by Marco Polo's Book of Marvels

Christopher Columbus sailed from Palos in 1492 seeking a western route to Asia. Among the works he carried was the medieval travelogue of Marco Polo, known as the "Book of Marvels" (Il Milione). Columbus kept the book annotated in his library and used Polo’s descriptions of the Silk Road, the Mongol Empire and China to shape his plan for reaching the East by sea.

The book, compiled from Polo’s journeys across Armenia, Persia, Afghanistan, Mongolia and China between 1271 and 1295, had become a reference for European explorers. Alongside other contemporary texts such as the Imago Mundi, it informed the Spanish monarchs’ sponsorship of Columbus’s expedition, linking two centuries of East‑West exploration through a single manuscript.