Mongolia · Orhon Aymag
Where to Stay in Erdenet, Orhon Aymag
Erdenet is a city of northern Mongolia, the country's second city, a mining town on the steppe built around one of the largest copper mines in the world.
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Where to stay in Erdenet
The right area depends on your trip — here's what each neighbourhood is best for.
Where you stay in Erdenet turns on the town or the steppe. The centre keeps the market, the theatre, and the temple within a walk, and staying downtown suits anyone here for the city. The mine lies just west.
Trucks rumble through the streets. Out toward the grassland and the hills, the town gives way to the quiet suburbs, the herders' camps, and the open road across the steppe. A room out of the centre trades the streets for the wide grass, the big skies, and the felt tents of the plains.
The steppe runs on for miles. Stay downtown for the city, or out for the steppe. The great mine and the wide steppe hold the mining city.
About Erdenet
Erdenet is the copper city of northern Mongolia.
What is Erdenet known for?
On the rolling steppe in the north of the country, it grew in the nineteen-seventies around a great mine, and it keeps the vast copper works that dug the city into being, the carpet mill that spins wool into rugs, the Buddhist temple above the streets, and the wide grasslands all around. The bare steppe rolls to the sky. Trucks haul ore from the pit.
What are the main landmarks in Erdenet?
The copper mine is the pride of Erdenet. The vast open pit that gouges the mountain, one of the greatest in the world, is the emblem of the city, out of downtown. A temple crowns the streets.
The Buddhist temple of Erdenet stands on a rise above the town nearby, while the carpet mill, the friendship monument, and the wide steppe mark the country around Erdenet.
What is the history of Erdenet?
Erdenet grew from a copper mountain. Beneath the steppe lay one of the greatest bodies of copper on earth, and in the nineteen-seventies Mongolia and its Soviet ally began to mine it. A city rose to work the ore.
Around the great open pit a whole new town was built for the miners and their families, and Erdenet became the second city of the land. The mine gave the country its wealth. For decades the copper of Erdenet earned much of Mongolia's living, and its ore went out by rail to the world.
The town kept the old ways too. On the steppe the herders still moved with their flocks, and a Buddhist temple rose above the streets, and Erdenet grew as the mining city of the north, keeping its mine, its mill, and its grasslands. The pit still yields its copper.
Erdenet keeps its mining city on the steppe.
Where is Erdenet?
Erdenet lies in the north of Mongolia, on the high steppe near the Selenge country. The city sits in a valley of the open grassland, ringed by low bare hills, on the great plateau of the north, with the copper mountain rising to the west and the steppe rolling away on every side. The grass runs green in summer.
Bare hills ring the town.
What is the climate of Erdenet?
Erdenet has a cold, arid continental climate. Short warm summers and long harsh winters cross the steppe, with dry sunny heat in summer and deep cold and little snow in winter. Summer greens the grass.
Winter freezes the land.
How do you get to Erdenet?
Erdenet lies in the north of Mongolia, on a branch line off the main railway. The rail spur and the road run to it from the Trans-Mongolian line, and the highway crosses the steppe to the capital. Trains haul the ore.
Ulaanbaatar lies southeast down the line.
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Updated August 2026