Xanadu

1. historicalThe summer capital of the Yuan dynasty, now an archaeological site in Zhenglan, Xilingol, Inner Mongolia, China.

   In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree: / Where Alph, the sacred river, ran / Through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea.

   1797, S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, “Kubla Khan: Or A Vision in a Dream”, in Christabel: Kubla Khan, a Vision: The Pains of Sleep, London: […] John Murray, […], by William Bulmer and Co. […], published 1816, →OCLC, page 55

   Synonyms: Shangdu

plural Xanadus

1. figurativelyA place full of beauty, happiness and wonder.

   A place where nobody dared to go The love that we came to know They call it Xanadu And now, open your eyes and see What we have made is real We are in Xanadu

   1980, Jeff Lynne, “Xanadu”

   3 more examples

   That's from the poem of the legend of Kubla Kahn's palace in the lost valley of Xanadu! Alph was the river in the legend! Unca Scrooge, this is the road to Xanadu! You've hit the jackpot! The most wondrous valley on earth! The land of milk and honey!

   1991, Don Rosa, “Return to Xanadu”, in Uncle Scrooge, volumes 261-262, page 5

   The lyric, as the ideological critics in particular would have it, plays host to a panoply of enticing pipe dreams conjured up by benighted idealists whose visions are doomed in advance to frustration as reality fails, time and again, to ratify their various Xanadus and Byzantiums.

   2013, Esther Allen, Susan Bernofsky, In Translation: Translators on Their Work and What It Means, page 240

   I never guessed that when I stumbled into the sheriff's office on a warm August afternoon, I'd met my future. I'd had no dream of finding my own little Eden, my snowcapped paradise, my Xanadu in the Valley of the Sky.

   2013, Mary Daheim, The Alpine Xanadu, page 319

   Synonyms: heaven, paradise, Shangri-La

2. An opulent building or resort that provides entertainment or luxurious living.

   Under the blazing Nevada sun, a dozen Xanadus glittered with million-watt neon signs.

   2012, Mario Puzo, Fools Die, page 6

   5 more examples

   “The United States in the twenties was dotted with a thousand Xanadus,” wrote movie-theater historian Ben Hall."

   1994, Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies, page 21

   The postmodern Xanadus that support this hallucination in the desert offer a particularly attractive paradise of the popular.

   2003, Jim Bell, Stephen Brown, David Carson, Marketing Apocalypse: Eschatology, Escapology and the Illusion of the End.

   The Normans went Muslim with such remarkable style that even Muslim poets were soon praising the new Norman Xanadus. Of one such place, which included nine brooks and a small lake with an island covered with lemon and orange trees, the poet Abd ur-Rahman Ibn Mohammed Ibn Omar wrote: […]

   2011, John McPhee, Oranges, page 68

   My only company among the vanished pleasures was a four-foot-long goanna, warily immobile on the stone wall, then slowly climbing a tree trunk, pausing now and then to check on me. Elsewhere in Middle Harbour there are half a dozen other abandoned Xanadus.

   2012, Gavin Souter, Times & Tides: A Middle Harbour Memoir

   Over the last century, Fire Island Pines, as the central square-mile section of this sandy spit is known, has evolved into something of a queer Xanadu. Now counting about 600 homes, it is a place of mythic weekend-long parties and carnal pleasure, a byword for bacchanalia and fleshy hedonism – but also simply a secluded haven where people can be themselves.

   2025 June 11, Oliver Wainwright, “‘Made for sex’: the hedonistic party palaces of New York’s Fire Island – and the blond bombshell who made them”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

   Synonyms: pleasure palace, pleasuredome, Shangri-La