Ulan Bator · MN

National Museum of Mongolia

The National Museum of Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar is the country's largest and most important repository of Mongolian history, ethnography and culture, holding some 60,000 objects that trace human life on the Central Asian steppe from the Stone Age to the democratic present. For a first-time visitor it is the single best place to understand how nomadic herders built one of history's vastest empires and how that heritage survived into modern Mongolia. Spread across nine permanent halls, the museum moves through deep prehistory, the rise of successive nomadic states, the age of Chinggis Khaan, the splendour of traditional dress, the rituals of nomadic life, the socialist decades and the peaceful revolution of 1990. Only about eight percent of the collection is on show at any one time, with the rest kept in the treasury and rotated through the galleries. The building itself is part of the story: erected in 1971 as the Museum of Revolution, it became Mongolia's first purpose-built museum home, and the institution it houses traces its roots to the very founding of Mongolian museums in 1924.