Ulaanbaatar travel guide

Top 10 sights in Ulaanbaatar

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1. 

   1© Chongkian · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Gandantegchinlen Monastery

   The main monastery of Mongolian Buddhism, and one of the few to survive the purges of 1937 in which most monasteries were destroyed. Its standing Avalokiteshvara, twenty-six metres high, was rebuilt in 1996 after the Soviets took the original for scrap.

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   Sükhbaatar Square

   The central square, named for the revolutionary Damdin Sukhbaatar after his death in 1923 and centred on his equestrian statue. The Government Palace stands to the north behind a colonnade of Genghis Khan flanked by Ogedei and Kublai; the square was renamed Chinggis Square from 2013 to 2016.

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3. 

   3© Vadas Róbert (Vadaro) · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Choijin Lama Temple

   A temple complex built in Ulaanbaatar between 1904 and 1908 for the state oracle, a brother of the last Bogd Khan. It was closed in 1938 and kept as a museum, which is why its masks, thangkas and statues survived the purges.

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4. 

   4© Chongkian · CC BY-SA 4.0

   National Museum of Mongolia

   The national museum, running from the Xiongnu and the Turkic empires through Genghis Khan to the socialist period and 1990. Its costume and jewellery collection from the different Mongol groups is the strongest part.

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5. 

   5© Torbenbrinker · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral (Ulaanbaatar)

   The Catholic cathedral of Ulaanbaatar, consecrated in 2003 and designed in the shape of a ger, the felt tent — a decision taken so that the building would not read as foreign. The Catholic community here numbers only a few thousand.

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   Zaisan Memorial

   A memorial on a hill south of the city to Soviet and Mongolian soldiers, with a circular mural of the two countries' alliance. The steps up it are climbed mostly for the view over Ulaanbaatar and the mountains behind.

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7. 

   7© Chongkian · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Natural History Museum

   The natural history museum, whose real subject is the Gobi — Tarbosaurus and Protoceratops skeletons and clutches of dinosaur eggs, from the fossil beds that have produced more complete Cretaceous material than almost anywhere on earth.

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8. 

   8© Chongkian · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Manzushir Monastery

   A monastery founded in 1733 on the south slope of Bogd Khan mountain and destroyed by the communist purge of 1937, in which some seven hundred Mongolian monasteries were levelled. Foundations, a temple and a cauldron that fed two thousand monks remain among the pines.

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9. 

   9© The original uploader was Tuxnduke at English Wikipedia. · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Sükhbaatar's Mausoleum

   A mausoleum on the main square that held the revolutionary leader Sükhbaatar and the ruler who followed him, built on the Soviet model. It was demolished in 2005 and the remains were reburied; a monument to Genghis Khan now stands behind the site.

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10. 

    10© Chongkian · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Fine Arts Zanabazar Museum

    A museum founded in 1966 for the bronzes of Zanabazar, the seventeenth-century sculptor and first spiritual head of Mongolian Buddhism, whose figures are the high point of Mongolian art. Thangkas and appliqué hang with them.

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1. 

   1© Chinneeb · CC BY 4.0

   Chinggis Khaan National Museum

   A museum opened in 2022 covering the Mongol empire in eight floors, from the tribes before Genghis to the successor khanates. It was built to give the country a national statement on its own history.

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   2© Jasmine Halki · CC BY 2.0

   Memorial Museum of Victims of Political Repression

   A museum in the 1928 timber house of a prime minister who was shot in Moscow in 1937, opened in 1996 by his daughter. It records the purges in which tens of thousands of Mongolians, most of them monks, were killed.

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3. 

   3© Batu · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Holy Trinity Church

   The Russian Orthodox church of Ulaanbaatar, first built in 1863 alongside the Russian consulate that the treaty of 1860 allowed. The present church serves a small Russian-speaking congregation.

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   4© CeeGee · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Central Museum of Dinosaurs of Mongolia

   The Central Museum of Mongolian Dinosaurs is built around the actual Tarbosaurus fossil from the Gobi. It is the display a country of dinosaurs deserves.

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   National Amusement Park

   An amusement park by a lake in the Sükhbaatar district, with rides, boats and shaded ground. It is a standard family outing during the short Mongolian summer.

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   6© Chongkian · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Ulaanbaatar City Museum

   A museum of the city's own history, in an early twentieth-century building that is itself a rare survival. It covers the shift from the movable monastery town of Urga to the planned Soviet capital.

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   Mongolian Railway History Museum

   A railway museum in the Sükhbaatar district with steam locomotives and rolling stock lined up in the open, from the trans-Mongolian line that has linked Moscow to Beijing since 1956.

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8. 

   8© Chongkian · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Ulaanbaatar Central Mosque

   A mosque in the Bayangol district of Ulaanbaatar, left unfinished and not yet in use. Mongolia's Muslims are mostly Kazakhs, and live largely in the far west of the country.

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9. 

   9© Chongkian · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Mongolian Military Museum

   A military museum in the Bayanzürkh district, opposite the barracks, covering Mongolian arms from the empire through the campaigns at Khalkhin Gol in 1939 to the modern army.

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10. 

    10© Chongkian · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Mongolian Theatre Museum

    A museum in the Central Cultural Palace beside Sükhbaatar Square in Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia. It was founded in 1991 and displays portraits of actors, playbills, photographs, models and costume, and carries out research on the performing arts.

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