The Inner Mongolia Museum, housed in a striking building designed to evoke the interior of a Mongolian ger, is one of the better provincial museums in northern China and admission is free. The collections are genuinely substantial: three floors cover natural history, archaeological finds from across the region, and the cultural heritage of the multiple ethnic groups that have inhabited Inner Mongolia. The Mongolian cultural galleries are the heart of the museum — they display traditional gers, clothing, musical instruments, and ceremonial objects in a way that conveys the depth and sophistication of nomadic material culture.
The archaeological sections include Neolithic jade artefacts from the Hongshan culture (predating Chifeng by enough cultural distance to be worth covering separately here), Bronze Age steppe materials, and Liao dynasty ceramics and metalwork that rival anything in Beijing's museums. The natural history floors cover the region's geology, palaeontology, and flora and fauna with exhibits that are above average for Inner Mongolia. Allow three hours for a thorough visit. The museum has a good gift shop with quality reproductions of regional artefacts.