How many surviving manuscripts of Marco Polo’s travel account are known?

There is no single authentic original manuscript of Marco Polo’s travel account, Il milione (also known as the Travels of Marco Polo). Because the work was produced long before the invention of printing, professional scribes and amateurs created numerous copies, translations, and adaptations that often altered the original text.1

Due to this complex history, there are approximately 140 different manuscript versions of the text known to exist, which are categorized into three manuscript groups and written in a dozen different languages and dialects. Other sources note that some 138 manuscripts of the work survive.12