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Xanadu
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How it came to be
North of the Great Wall, on the grasslands at the south-eastern edge of the Mongolian plateau, lie the ruins of Shangdu, Xanadu. In 1256 Liu Bingzhong, the Chinese adviser to the Mongol ruler Kublai, laid out the city by feng shui, with mountains to the north and a river to the south. It was first called Kaiping.
It was Kublai's first capital from 1263 to 1273, and after he founded the Yuan dynasty it served as the summer capital from 1274 to 1364. It had an outer city, an inner city and a palace, and in the 13th century it hosted a debate between Buddhists and Taoists that helped spread Tibetan Buddhism across north-east Asia.
In 1369 Ming forces sacked it and the city was abandoned. Temples, palaces, tombs, nomadic encampments and the Tiefan'gang canal remain. It was inscribed in 2012.
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