The Marco Polo Foundation, Inc. is a non-profit foundation dedicated to providing a better understanding between the East and the West by means of International research, expeditions along the routes of Marco Polo, publication of books, production of films, video and the creation of this website.
Our newest book of history and adventure is now available:
The Marco Polo Odyssey: In the Footsteps of a Merchant Who Changed the World
The Marco Polo Odyssey tracks the fantastic journey of an intrepid adventurer who spent ten years following the 13,000 mile overland route of Marco Polo from Venice to Israel, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and finally crossing China to Beijing. It is an account of an exhilarating voyage of discovery and the three expeditions it took author Harry Rutstein to finally fulfill his dream.
Using every means of travel available-including camels, farm tractors, horses and goatskin rafts-author Harry Rutstein became the first person known to have retraced Marco Polo's footsteps. This book chronicles his extraordinary adventures and authenticates the 13th century journey of the great explorer.Marco Polo's travels and subsequent bestselling book sparked the expansion of the mercantile empires of medieval Europe and gave birth to the modern age of globalization.
The Marco Polo Odyssey is history wrapped in adventure. Harry Rutstein made history in 1985 as the first person to retrace all of Marco Polo's footsteps from Europe to China. This is the account of his ten-year adventure in pursuit of the famous 13th century explorer. His quest, over the course of three expeditions, was to authenticate Polo's journey and document his own experiences traveling the same route. The result is a compelling, colorful and humorous chronicle by a master storyteller.
Included with book: DVD of 26 minute movie: On the Roof of the World with Marco Polo produced by the Marco Polo Foundation, Inc. (1982). A documentary of the 1981 Harry Rutstein expedition across the Hindu Kush mountains of Northern Pakistan
Hardback
271 pages
137 color photos
9 full color maps
ISBN: 978-0-9802076-0-6
Published by Bennett & Hastings, September, 2008
Read More About The Marco Polo Odyssey: In the Footsteps of a Merchant Who Changed the World
LA ODISEA DE MARCO POLO
By Harry Rutstein
This new translation of The Marco Polo Odyssey will be available in September, 2010 from bookstores and Amazon.com. The publisher is Nowtilus Publications, Madrid, Spain
In the Footsteps of Marco Polo: A Twentieth-Century Oddyssey
By Harry Rutstein and Joanne Kroll
An intrepid American trio in search of the exotic regions and cultures of Marco Polo's thirteenth-century world set out to record afresh Polo's journey, a trip that the young Marco took with his father and uncle in 1271. An account of Marco's travels through the Middle and Far East created quite a sensation when handwritten copies of it appeared; indeed, the author was ridiculed and accused of telling "millions" of lies. It was only in later centuries that, "The Travels" (or "Description of the World" as the book is also called) was recognized as the first factual account of the East.
Through the centuries students of history and all those with a passion for travel and adventure have read Marco Polo's words with fascination. The authors of "In the Footsteps of Marco Polo" found it so inspiring that they could not resist the temptation to trace the Venetian's steps as far as they could go; no modern-day traveler had duplicated the journey successfully, but they were determined to try. Beginning in Venice, Harry Rutstein, Joanne Kroll, and Richard Rutstein (Harry's nineteen-year-old son, equal in age to Marco when he first set off with his father on their historic journey) crossed the Mediterranean to reach Athens, then sailed to Acre, which for three thousand years has been a port, today known as Haifa, in Israel. In Jerusalem they visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, from which the Kublai Khan had requested the elder Polos to bring him the holy chrism oil. Then they traveled to Turkey, where they crossed the desolate Anatolian plateau, past Mt. Ararat, and south through Iran to Afghanistan, across one thousand miles of its mountains and deserts in the North to the Hindu Kush Mountains. Here the expedition was forced to stop since winter had arrived and passage through the snow covered mountain passes was impossible. The journey would continue another day.
The sights that this trio encountered--landscapes and structures centuries old, hardly altered since Polo knew them--and the people they met are captured in Rutstein's photographs. Everything they experience is in their diary, into which they have woven selections from Polo's own book, thus offering the reader two views seven centuries apart. Text and photographs vivify an ancient trip through ancient lands, a journey that will appeal to all adventurers in quest of an uncommon experience.
Hardback
128 pages
142 color and black & white photos
7 maps and many ancient prints
ISBN: 0-670-39683-4
Published by Viking Press, 1980
Harry Rutstein
Harry Rutstein is a modern day Marco Polo. His unprecedented expedition following the 13th century traveler from Venice to Beijing has won him the title of Fellow in the Royal Geographic Society and the Explorers Club. Rutstein has written two books, presented lectures around the world, produced videos about his projects and has attempted in many ways to carry on Marco Polo's efforts to introduce Ancient Asia to the western world. It has been this objective that Harry Rutstein has pursued for over thirty-five years.
THE EXPEDITIONS is a narrated slide show of the 1975, 1981 and 1985 expeditions as presented in our book The Marco Polo Odyssey.
THE PROJECT is a video presentation offering a summary of the entire Marco Polo project including film clips from the DVD movie On the Roof of the World with Marco Polo that is enclosed with our book The Marco Polo Odyssey.