These are the opening lines of "Kublai Khan", a poem written in 1798 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834):
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.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
with walls and towers were girdled round.
He is describing the exotic and splendid palace of a Mongol emperor of the 13th century, KUBLAI KHAN, already vividly described by Marco Polo.
In 1927, John Livingstone Lowes wrote The Road to Xanadu, in which he analyzed the probably sources of Coleridge's dream poem.
A Xanadu is a place of beauty and splendor, like the TAJ MAHAL.
