ta-tu

Updated: August 18, 2026

Kublai Khan, Genghis's grandson, fixed his residence definitively in Peking in 1264, and began building the Ta-tu, or Great Residence the Tartar city of to-day. The Chinese city is oblong; the Tartar city is squat and square and overlaps and dominates the northern walls of the older city.

- Indiscreet Letters From Peking : Being the Notes of an Eye-Witness, Which Set Forth in Some Detail, from Day to Day, the Real Story of the Siege and Sack of a Distressed Capital in 1900—The Year of Great Tribulation