Person
Rustichello da Pisa
Italian admiral of the Republic of Genoa
Rustichello da Pisa, also known as Rusticiano and Rustigielo (fl.
late thirteenth century), is an Italian romance writer best known for cowriting Marco Polo's autobiography while they are in prison together in Genoa.
A native Pisan, he may have been captured by the Genoese at the Battle of Meloria in 1284, amid a conflict between the Republic of Genoa and Pisa.
When Polo is imprisoned around 1298, perhaps after a clash between Genoa and Venice (according to tradition the Battle of Curzola), he dictates his tales of travel to Rustichello, and together they turn it into the book known as The Travels of Marco Polo.