Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California, has been considered to be the main inspiration for Xanadu, due to the William Randolph Hearst/Kane comparison that was a large source of controversy after the film's release.

The newsreel directly quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan, which tells of the title character's erection of a "stately pleasure-dome" in the city of Xanadu.

Since the Pyramids, Xanadu is the costliest monument a man has built to himself.The estate also boasts a championship golf course and a Venetian-style canal with gondolas.

The extensive zoo and aquarium were stocked with a menagerie of animals including monkeys, horses, giraffes, birds, octopuses, elephants and donkeys.

Central to the estate is Xanadu proper, the castle-like mansion that served as Kane's home and repository for his enormous collection of antiquities and objets d'art.

Xanadu has a butler and at least a few dozen footmen and maidservants, who are shown at the end of the scene where Kane wrecks his wife's suite after she leaves him.