Xanadu
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This article is about the summer capital of Kublai Khan's empire. For other meanings see Xanadu (disambiguation)
Xanadu or Zanadu (Chinese: 上都; pinyin: Shàngdū) was the summer capital of Kublai Khan's Mongol Empire, which covered much of Asia. It is in Inner Mongolia, 275 km north of Beijing, northwest of Duolun and northeast of Lanqui/Zhenglan Banner/Dund Hot. The capital consisted of the square-shaped "Outer City" (2,200 metres square), "Inner City" (1,400 metres square), and the palace, where Kublai Khan stayed in summer. The palace is 550 metres square, 40% the size of Forbidden City in Beijing (China). The most visible modern-day remnants are the earthen walls ("So twice five miles of fertile ground/ With walls and towers were girdled round:..."), though there is also a (ground-level) circular brick platform in the centre of the inner enclosure. Few aspects of the poetic description are to be found: Artistic licence
The Mongolian Khans made very few changes to their country, imbibing much of the Confucianist and Taoist philosophies, and remodelling their government on the native dynasties they had defeated. However, they opened up the empire to westerners, allowing travellers like Venetian explorer Marco Polo in 1275 to report the wonders of the Eastern capital to their fellow Europeans.
The reported splendour of Xanadu later inspired Samuel Taylor Coleridge to write his great poem Kubla Khan and caused Xanadu to become a metaphor for opulence. Xanadu is remembered today largely thanks to this poem, which contains the following often-quoted lines:
- In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
- A stately pleasure-dome decree:
- Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
- Through caverns measureless to man
- Down to a sunless sea.
- So twice five miles of fertile ground
- With walls and towers were girdled round:
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