Ulan Bator

Ulan Bator

Understand Downtown Ulaanbaatar in 2015 Ulaanbaatar has many different and distinct layers. Long gone are the days when this city was just a typical, drab Soviet-bloc town in the middle of nowhere. One can witness the traditional, the Soviet, and the super-modern, all within a 5 minute walk through the city. Ulaanbaatar lies in the Altan Tevshiin Kundii (Valley of the Golden Cradle). Here the rivers Selbe and Tuul meet at the foot of the imposing Bogd Khan Mountain. In the forested and watered zone of northern Mongolia, it resides near the 2,000-year-old royal tombs of the Xiongnu, the 8th-century Turkic inscription of General Tonyukuk, and the birthplace of Genghis Khan. From the 20,000-year-old Paleolithic settlement on the Zaisan monument to the 12th century palace of the Nestorian Christian monarch Toghrul, there is a lot to learn and discover about this deep first layer of Ulaanbaatar. The second layer is the Urga or Örgöö of 1639-1778 — what would become Ulaanbaatar was established as a nomadic monastic center for the spiritual leader Zanabazar in 1639…

Source: Wikivoyage · CC BY-SA 4.0.