Xanadu Ruins 元上都遗址

About Xanadu Ruins

The low walls and palace foundations need a little interpretation: the nested outer, imperial and palace enclosures once combined a Chinese-style capital with space for the Mongol court's tents and seasonal life. Begin at the separate site museum to understand that plan, then follow the authorised route among the surviving earthworks. The surrounding Jinlianchuan grassland remains essential to understanding why the court came here.

Liu Bingzhong (刘秉忠) began building a residence for Kublai Khan on the site in March 1256, and Kublai was enthroned there on 5 May 1260. On 16 June 1263 the settlement, then called Kaiping (开平), was elevated and renamed Shangdu (上都). After Kublai moved his capital to Yanjing (renamed Dadu in 1271) in 1267, Shangdu continued to serve as a secondary and summer capital. Red Turban forces captured the city on 8 January 1359 and burned its palace halls before withdrawing after seven days. The Ming army took Shangdu on 20 July 1369, after which it was renamed Kaiping Prefecture and later downgraded to a garrison.

The site was listed as an Inner Mongolia protected cultural site in 1964 and as a Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level in 1988. It was placed on China's tentative World Heritage list in 1996, nominated for inscription in 2012, and on 29 June 2012 the World Heritage Committee, meeting in Saint Petersburg, inscribed it on the World Heritage List. The inscribed area covers about 251 square kilometers, including the city site, the outskirts (关厢), Tiefangan Canal (铁幡竿渠) and the Zhenzishan (砧子山) and Yikeshu (一棵树) burial grounds, with a buffer zone of about 1,507 square kilometers.

What to look for

• The nested city enclosures and surviving palace foundations, including the Da'an Pavilion area.
• The site museum's archaeological interpretation of the Yuan summer capital.

Location & getting there

Getting to Xanadu Ruins

Travel from Shangdu Town in Zhenglan Banner toward the ruins, about 20 kilometres east of town.

• The museum is roughly five kilometres south of the ruins at Wulantai Aobao Mountain; plan a road transfer between the two, then check the site's current internal transport options.