structural:expansion, structural:scholar_edition, linguistic:voice_change, stylistic:style_transfer
Family origin

Marco Polo was born around 1254 in Venice, but the exact date and place of birth are archivally unknown. The Travels of Marco Polo contains some basic information concerning Marco Polo's Venetian family and his birth in Venice; the book states that Marco's father, the travelling merchant Niccolò Polo, returned to visit his family in his hometown of Venice around 1269 and there found out that his wife, whom he had left pregnant, had died and left a 15-year-old son named Marco.

In contrast to the general consensus, there are theories suggesting that Marco Polo's birthplace was the island of Korčula or Constantinople but such hypotheses failed to gain acceptance among most scholars and have been countered by other studies. There has also been dispute as to whether the Polo family is of Venetian origin because their exact origin is also unknown. There existed at least two families of the same surname in Venice, one in the San Geremia district, and another in the San Giovanni Grisostomo where was Marco's family house (he is mentioned in 1323 as Marco Paulo de confinio Sancti Iohannis Grisostomi), and their members and coat of arms are often mistaken in the sources. Some Venetian sources of the 15th and 16th centuries considered that the family Polo was of Dalmatian origin. Placido Zurla in the early 19th century noted that in the historical sources there is a lack of any specific mention related to Polo's family, while Niccolò Tommaseo in the mid-19th century considered Dalmatian origin of the family. Some scholars such as Alvise Zorzi argue Venetian origin and that it can be traced up to the 10th century. According to another disputed theory their origin and Polo's birthplace was on the island of Korčula, which is influenced by Ramusio's account about Polo's capture during the Battle of Curzola (1298).

According to some sources, in 1168, his great-uncle, Marco Polo "the Elder", borrowed money and commanded a ship in Constantinople, and his grandfather Andrea Polo of the parish of San Felice had three sons Maffeo, yet another Marco, and the traveller's father Niccolò. This genealogy and information, also probably confusing separate Polo families, created by Giovanni Battista Ramusio in Navigationi et Viaggi (1559), is not universally accepted as there is no additional evidence to support it. The date of birth of Polo's father Niccolò and the name of Polo's mother are unknown.