Bill Gates’s mansion in Medina, Washington, known for its advanced technology, was called Xanadu 2.0.
The name refers to Xanadu, the magnificent palace described in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan.” The house was designed as a large private residence overlooking Lake Washington and was built over several years.
Xanadu 2.0 became widely known for features such as a sophisticated home-automation system, extensive communications infrastructure, and rooms designed to display digital art. Visitors could reportedly customize environmental settings with electronic systems.
Media reports have often repeated estimates of the property’s construction cost and size, but those figures vary. The name and location are more stable facts than many of the widely circulated architectural statistics.