Sükhbaatar Square

Ceremonial heart of UB, with Genghis Khan colonnade and surrounding museums

Sükhbaatar Square (officially Chinggis Khaan Square) is the ceremonial centre of Ulaanbaatar — a vast expanse of paving ringed by government buildings, the neoclassical opera house, and a colonnade fronting the Parliament building. The colonnade centres on an enormous bronze statue of Chinggis Khaan in a throne, flanked by seated statues of his grandson Kublai on one side and his son Ögedei on the other, with warrior generals on horseback at each end.

The square hosts state ceremonies, political rallies, and the opening of the Naadam festival in early July. On ordinary evenings, Mongolian teenagers hang out here, couples walk around the perimeter, and food vendors set up along the edges. It is a genuinely lived-in public space, not just a ceremonial one. The Mongolian State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet on the east side of the square is worth checking for performances during a visit.

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The square is named for Damdin Sükhbaatar, the Mongolian revolutionary who declared independence from Chinese rule here in 1921. For decades the centrepiece was a mausoleum containing the embalmed bodies of Sükhbaatar and the Stalinist leader Choibalsan — who was responsible for the mass murder of Mongolia's Buddhist monks and intellectuals in the 1930s purges. The mausoleum was demolished in 2005. A large seated statue of Genghis Khan now occupies the Parliament portico, presiding over the square in a notably different ideological register.

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