Xanadu

Xanadu ( /ˈzæn.ə.duː/; Mongolian: šanadu), or Shangdu (Chinese: 上都; pinyin: Shàngdū, ) was the summer capital of Kublai Khan's Yuan Dynasty in China, before he decided to move the seat of his dynasty to the Jin Dynasty capital of Zhōngdū (Chinese: 中都), which he renamed Dàdū, the present-day Beijing. Xanadu was visited by the Venetian traveler Marco Polo in about 1275, and in 1797 inspired a famous poem, Kubla Khan, by one of the leading English poets of the Romanticism movement, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Xanadu was located in what is now called Inner Mongolia, 350 kilometres (220 mi) north of Beijing, about 28 kilometres (17 mi) northwest of the modern town of Duolun. The layout of the capital is roughly square shaped with sides of about 2,200m; it consists of an "Outer City", and an "Inner City" in the southeast of the capital which has also roughly a square layout with sides about 1,400m, and the palace, where Kublai Khan stayed in summer. The palace has sides of roughly 550m, covering an area of around 40% the size of the Forbidden City in Beijing. The most visible modern-day remnants are the earthen walls though there is also a ground-level, circular brick platform in the centre of the inner enclosure.

The city, originally named Kaiping (开平, Kāipíng), was designed by Chinese architect Liu Bingzhong from 1252 to 1256, and Liu implemented a "profoundly Chinese scheme for the city's architecture." In 1264 it was renamed Shangdu. At its zenith, over 100,000 people lived within its walls. In 1369 Shangdu was occupied by the Ming army and put to the torch. The last reigning Khan, Toghun Temür, fled the city.

Today, only ruins remain, surrounded by a grassy mound that was once the city walls. Since 2002, restoration effort has been undertaken. In June 2012, Xanadu was made a World Heritage Site.