Site of Xanadu in Inner Mongolia

Shangdu (Chinese: 上都; literally: ‘Upper Capital’, Mandarin: [ʂɑ̂ŋ tú]), also known as Xanadu (/ˈzænəduː/; Mongolian: Šandu), was the capital of Kublai Khan’s Yuan dynasty in China, before he decided to move his throne to the Jin dynasty capital of Zhōngdū (Chinese: 中都; literally: ‘Middle Capital’), which he renamed Khanbaliq, present-day Beijing. Shangdu then became his summer capital. It is located in the present-day Zhenglan Banner, in Inner Mongolia, China.

Shangdu (Xanadu) was visited by the Venetian traveller Marco Polo in about 1275 and was destroyed in 1369 by the Ming army under Zhu Yuanzhang. In 1797 historical accounts of the city inspired the famous poem Kubla Khan by the English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.