Marco Polo is the world’s most famous traveler and we all have heard something about him and his travels to China. Marco Polo stands for the first direct contact between Europe and China in the Age of the first Eurasian Globalization under the Mongol Empire, the model of East-West exchange. Yet everything known about him comes from his book, which was written more than 700 years ago and whose reliability has been often questioned. This course will introduce students to the text, his two authors and the wider historical context surrounding the travel and its written account. At the end of the course students will have acquired a deeper understanding of cultural exchange between Europe and China in the Middle Ages as well as in later periods, and know the answers to questions such as “Did Marco Polo go to China?” and “Did Marco Polo bring spaghetti back to Europe?”.