Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu is Laurence Bergreen's thrilling and masterly reconstruction of the life and wanderings of one the great adventurers of world history. The scion of a prosperous and tight-knit merchant family in a Venetian republic that was approaching the height of its political and trading power, between 1271 and 1275 Marco Polo accompanied his father Niccolo and uncle Maffeo on a journey east from Acre into central Asia along the Silk Route, eventually reaching China and the court of the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, Kublai Khan. Entering the service of the Khan, he travelled extensively in the Mongol Empire.