This article about Marco Polo contains extraneous information that I don't want to sift through.  Write a summary that eliminates the extra information and focuses on the main events in his life.

Italian Trader at the Court of Kublai Khan
At the height of the Mongol Empire, Marco Polo served Emperor Kublai Khan in China and returned to Venice to write an account of his experiences that would give Europeans some of their earliest information about China.
Background
In the 13th century, people who lived in Venice, Italy, believed that the Sun revolved around the Earth and that creation occurred exactly 4,484 years before Rome was founded. As Christians, they considered Jerusalem, the place of Jesus’s crucifixion, to be the so-called navel of the world, and their maps portrayed this.
Marco Polo was born in Venice, or possibly Croatia, in 1254. Located on the eastern coast of Italy, Venice served as a gateway to the riches of Asia during this era of increasing trade. Goods flowed like water through the city. Ships from around the eastern Mediterranean docked at its port. Merchants and traders set sail from Venice for Constantinople (now Istanbul) and the Black Sea to fetch goods from Russia and from merchants who traveled the Silk Roads, a system of trading routes to and from China that crossed the mountains and deserts of Central Asia.
At the time of Marco’s birth, his father, Niccolo, and two uncles, all merchants, were away trading. Supposedly they were visiting cities on the Black Sea, but their adventures had actually taken them all the way to the Mongol capital of China, Khanbaliq (city of the Khan). There they had an audience with the most powerful ruler of the day, Kublai Khan, grandson of the founding emperor, Genghis Khan. When the three Polo men returned to Venice after an absence of 16 years, Niccolo found that his wife had died and that he had a 15-year-old son, Marco, whom he did not know existed.
Travels
Two years later, in 1271, Niccolo Polo and his brother, Maffeo, set off again, taking the 17-year-old Marco with them. This time they aimed directly for the court of Kublai Khan, to bring him documents from the pope and holy oil from Jerusalem that he had requested. Even with a gold passport from Kublai Khan, which enabled the travelers to use lodgings and horses posted by the Mongols along the Silk Road routes, they took three and a half years to arrive. Upon reaching the summer palace of Kublai Khan in 1275, Niccolo presented his son and offered him in service to the emperor.

A talented young man, Marco had learned several languages along the way, including Mongolian (though not Chinese), and had mastered four written alphabets. Two years before Marco’s arrival, Kublai Khan had completed the conquest of all parts of China and needed non-Mongol administrators in areas that resisted having Mongol authorities. Marco took on various sorts of diplomatic and administrative roles for the emperor from his base in Dadu, which Kublai Khan built next to Khanbaliq. Both Dadu and Khanbaliq stood at what is now Beijing.
After more than 16 years in China, the Polos begged permission from Kublai Khan to return home to Venice. Apparently they had proved so useful to the khan that he did not want them to leave. Finally, he agreed for them to escort a Mongolian princess, Cogatin, to become the bride of a Persian khan; thus they headed back west.

This time they traveled by sea in Chinese ships and, after many difficulties, succeeded in delivering the princess. Before they could reach Venice, however, Kublai Khan died on February 18, 1294, which allowed local rulers to reassert themselves and demand payment from traders. Consequently, the Polos were forced to hand over 4,000 Byzantine coins, a significant portion of their fortune, to the local government of a city on the Black Sea.
Return
The Polos returned to Venice in 1295, having been away 24 years. Their enthusiastic biographer told stories, which may have been gossip, that when they returned they were wearing Mongolian clothing and could hardly remember their native language. Their relatives had thought them long dead. But when they produced a small fortune in gems (rubies, sapphires, garnets, diamonds, and emeralds), which had been sewn into the hems of their Mongolian garments, they were warmly welcomed.
Soon Venice was at war with its rival city-state, Genoa, on the west coast of Italy. As was custom for a wealthy merchant, Marco Polo financed his own war galley. He was captured during a naval battle and ended up in prison in Genoa.
By chance, one of his cellmates, Rusticello from Pisa, had experience writing romantic novels. As Polo entertained everyone with his tales of traveling to China, Rusticello wrote them down in a French dialect. This is how Polo’s accounts, Europe’s primary source of information about China until the 19th century, came into existence.
In 1299 Genoa and Venice declared peace; Polo was released and returned to Venice to marry Donata Badoer. The couple had three daughters in quick succession. He spent his remaining days as a businessman, working from home. He died there at almost 70 years of age, on January 8, 1324, and was buried under the church of San Lorenzo, though his tomb has now vanished.


Marco Polo, who lived in Venice, a major trading center was born into a family of trading merchants in 1254. His father, who had been seeking trade in the East, did not know Marco until he was 15. In 1271, his father left once more, taking Marco along to visit the court of Kublai Khan. They reached their destination in 1275.

Because Marco spoke many languages, including Mongolian, and Kublai Khan needed Mongolian-speaking administrators for the newly conquered region, Marco served Khan in administrative and diplomatic roles. Appointed to escort a princess to Persia, the Polos returned to Venice after more than 24 years away bringing along a small fortune.

Marco Polo, who took part in a war between Venice and Genoa was captured and ended up in prison where he met Rusticello who wrote novels. Rusticello wrote of Marco’s adventures which is how Polo’s accounts became Europe’s primary source of information about China until the 19th century. Upon his release in 1299, he returned home, married, raised a family, and worked as a businessman until he died in 1324.