Kublai Khan's XANADU Unearthed In China

[Bianca]

                                          Kublai Khan's Xanadu unearthed in China




           

Beijing,
July 8, 2009
(Xinhua)
YahooNewsAsia

Xanadu, the city built by Mongol emperor Kublai Khan and mentioned by Italian traveller Marco Polo, has been unearthed by Chinese archaeologists who have sketched its layout.

'The most exciting findings are the layout of the moat in front of the Mingde Gate to the royal capital
in the three-month excavation,' said Yang Xingyu, a senior archaeologist.

Xanadu, also spelled Shangdu, was built in 1256 under the command of Kublai Khan, the first emperor of Yuan or Mongol Dynasty (1206-1368). It became the summer capital of Mongol emperors of China after the Yuan Dynasty moved its capital to what is now Beijing.

Yang said that the excavation programme is expected to take three years to unearth structures in Shangdu.

Marco Polo (1254-1324) once described the prosperity of Shangdu in his book, arising the interest of many archaeologists and historians.

The regional administration of Inner Mongolia has submitted an application for World Cultural Heritage status for the site with the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco).



Indo Asian News Service

[Bianca]

                                                           X A N A D U






Xanadu, also spelled Shangdu or Shang-tu (Chinese: 上都; pinyin: Shàngdū)

and also known as Kaiping (simplified Chinese: 开平; traditional Chinese: 開平; pinyin: Kāi Píng),

was the summer capital of Kublai Khan's Yuan Dynasty in China, after he decided to move the capital
of the Yuan Dynasty to Dadu, present-day Beijing.



The city was located in what is now called Inner Mongolia, 275 kilometres (171 mi) north of Beijing, about 28 kilometres (17 mi) northwest of the modern town of Duolun. (see map)

The layout of the capital is roughly square shaped with sides of about 2200m, 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 1400m, and the palace, where Kublai Khan stayed in summer. The palace has sides of roughly 550m, 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.



Xanadu was visited by Venetian explorer Marco Polo in 1275. It became fabled as a metaphor for opulence, most famously in the English Romantic Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem 'Kubla Khan'.

[Bianca]

   

[PragmaticStatistic]

Thanks to Bianca's input you can find Xanadu at:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=202977755949863934429.0004a0e409e231721ea1d&ll=42.35791,116.186857&spn=0.018203,0.053473&t=h&z=15&iwloc=0004a0e6fcb0405702764