Inner Mongolia Museum (内蒙古博物院)

The Inner Mongolia Museum (内蒙古博物院) is the largest museum in the world by floor area - about 70,000 square metres, opened in 2007. It is also free, which makes it the best-value thing to do in Hohhot if you have 2-3 hours.

The building is the point before the collection is. It is shaped like a saddle, a nod to the steppe, and the central atrium alone is worth seeing.

Highlights

The Xiongnu Gallery. The core of it. 2,000 years of steppe burial culture, with gold plaques, belt buckles and animal-style art that has no real equivalent anywhere else. Most visitors walk past this because the English labels are thin.

The Buried Horses. Several tombs preserved horses still wearing their saddles and harnesses, frozen in position with the burial goods arranged around them. This is the exhibit people remember.

The Nomadic Crowns (鹰形金冠). A gold eagle-shaped crown, only a few centimetres tall, inlaid with turquoise and carnelian. Made for a ruler of a steppe people to wear as a hat ornament. Small object, enormous presence.

The Walk-In Yurt. A full-size reconstructed ger (蒙古包) you can enter and sit in, at the far end of the ground floor. Good place to rest and to get your bearings in a building this big.

The Yuan Dynasty Section. Genghis Khan's grandson Kublai Khan ruled all of China from here in Dadu (Beijing), and this gallery covers the Mongol empire from the steppe side rather than the Chinese side.

Practical

Free, ¥0. Your passport or ID is required at the security gate - no passport, no entry, no exceptions.

Closed Mondays. Last entry around 4:00 PM. Go on a weekday morning: weekend visitors and school groups arrive in volume. Signage is mostly Chinese with English section headers only, so budget the extra time.

Ten minutes by taxi from the old town, or 25 minutes on Metro Line 2 to the museum-adjacent stops. Combine with Dazhao Temple on the same half-day.