Xanadu was real: Kublai Khan's summer capital, Shangdu.
Marco Polo described its splendid palace, and in 1797 Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan" turned Xanadu into a byword for fabulous luxury.
The events
- Kublai Khan founds the Yuan dynasty1271 · Khanbaliq. Genghis Khan's grandson Kublai proclaimed the Yuan dynasty, with its capital at Khanbaliq (Dadu), on the site of modern Beijing. In 1279 the Mongols completed the conquest of the Song, bringing all of China under foreign rule for the first time.
- Travels of Marco Polo1271–1295 · Shangdu (Xanadu). The Venetian Marco Polo travelled to China with his father and uncle and spent some 17 years at the court of Kublai Khan. His book of travels became Europe's chief source of knowledge about Asia for centuries.
More amazing facts
- 1271 · 1661 Marco Polo marvelled that in Kublai Khan's empire people paid with paper.
- 1271 · 1368 Marco Polo never mentions the Great Wall, but that does not prove he lied.
- 1271 · 1287 While Marco Polo served Kublai Khan in China, a monk from Beijing toured Europe.
- 1281 · 1944 The word kamikaze is over 660 years older than Japan's suicide pilots. "Divine wind" was the name given to the typhoons that scattered Kublai Khan's fleets off Japan in 1274 and 1281.
- 1284 Hamelin has a street where music is forbidden.
- 1286 · 1306 Eyeglasses are over 700 years old, and we know it from a sermon.