Erdene Zuu is the oldest surviving Buddhist monastery in Mongolia and the reason most travellers make the long journey out to the steppe. Founded in 1586 on the site of ancient Karakorum, it is enclosed by a remarkable outer wall studded with 108 white stupas — the number sacred in Buddhist tradition. Three main temples survive from the original complex, their interiors dense with gilded statues, silk thangkas, and murals depicting tantric deities. The monastery is a UNESCO World Heritage site as part of the Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape.
The temples were repeatedly ransacked and rebuilt over the centuries — the complex once held over sixty buildings and three thousand monks before the Stalinist purges of the late 1930s reduced it to rubble and silence. What stands today is a fraction of what was, but the surviving structures are genuinely beautiful. Give yourself at least two hours here; the museum inside the grounds is worth the extra admission, and the scale of the enclosure wall is best understood on foot.