Is the legendary city of Xanadu for real?
“In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree, where Alph, the sacred river ran, through caverns measureless to man, down to the sunless sea.” Assuming this refers to the Mongolian Khan dynasty, then the locale would have to be the far East around Mongolia or China. Furthermore, the city would be underground, in a mountain chain in order for the river to flow downhill thru a cavern network, probably of limestone, down to an underground body of water extensive enough to be called a sea. The cavern network would have to be accessible and large enough for work gangs and supply trains to come and go as they built the city, and there would be a road to the cavern opening to facilitate transport. As no such place has ever been found, it is highly likely that the whole thing was invented solely for the poem, or is the result of exaggeration about a real place, perhaps a small fortification of Khan’s actually located in a small cave and long since forgotten except in legend and sto
