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Site of Xanadu
Site number:
1389
Type of site: Cultural
Date: 1256
Date of Inscription: 2012
Location: Asia, China, Inner Mongolia
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Description: North of the Great Wall, the Site of Xanadu encompasses the remains of Kublai Khan’s legendary capital city, designed by the Mongol ruler’s Chinese advisor Liu Bingzhdong in 1256. Over a surface area of 25,000 ha, the site was a unique attempt to assimilate the nomadic Mongolian and Han Chinese cultures. From this base, Kublai Khan established the Yuan dynasty that ruled China over a century, extending its boundaries across Asia. The religious debate that took place here resulted in the dissemination of Tibetan Buddhism over north-east Asia, a cultural and religious tradition still practised in many areas today. The site was planned according to traditional Chinese feng shui in relation to the nearby mountains and river. It features the remains of the city, including temples, palaces, tombs, nomadic encampments and the Tiefan’gang Canal, along with other waterworks. --WHMNet's description is from WHC Site, where additional information is available.
  Xanadu ( Mongolian: šanadu), or Shangdu (Chinese: 上都; pinyin: Shàngdū, Mandarin pronunciation: [ʂɑ̂ŋ tú]) 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 described by the Venetian traveler Marco Polo, 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. --Wikipedia. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
Source: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1389
Reference: 1. UNESCO World Heritage Center (http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1389). 2. Wikipedia.
 
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