Origins of Marco Polo
From folk game to federation.
Nobody knows exactly when people first started playing Marco Polo. The game is named after the Venetian merchant Marco Polo (1254–1324), and folk accounts link the call-and-response to stories of the explorer lost in the desert, calling out to his companions. FIMP's historians treat these accounts as legend.
The earliest written reference held in the FIMP Archive is an 1894 schoolmaster's log describing “the Venetian calling game” at a seaside baths. By the 1920s the game was played at lidos across Europe, with local variations in the number of players, the size of the playing area and whether players could leave the water.
In 1927, the Swiss swimming instructor Émile Brasset wrote the Vevey Rules, 14 articles that fixed the call (“Marco”), the response (“Polo”), the closed-eyes requirement and the tag. Four years later, nine national federations met at Vevey to found the Fédération Internationale de Marco Polo. The Vevey Rules became the first edition of the FIMP Code of Competition.