Ulaan Baatar in 1915.
Several of the landmarks still exist to this day. Here are Google streetviews of them:
Chojin Lama Temple Museum, right in the middle of the city
Monestary of the Gandantegchinlin. It used to be on the Eastern outskirts of UB, but now it’s east of downtown. The couple dozen or so streets around the monestary are still the original streets which existed in 1915 (one of the only places in UB where the actual streets still exist 100 years later).
The Yellow Palace has been torn down (the big complex right in the middle of the map). It has been replaced with the government palace (the seat of Mongolia’s government). This building was renovated several years ago (prior to this, it was a crumbling Soviet-inspired building).
The Dambadarjaa Monestary still exists in the NE suburbs (very top of the map).
The Bogo Khan Museum still exists (bottom centre of the map).
I haven’t been to UB for many years. When I searched these links for the comments, I was suprised to see all the highrises. None of them existed 10 years ago (the last time I was in UB).
I can see that huge swaths of the city have been bulldozed in the last 10 years (often very ran down parts of the city).
But it is nice to see that they have indeed preserved much of what should have definitely been preserved.
As an aside, it is still very common to see Gurs (the Yurt-like tents) scattered all around the city and still being lived in… even today, just like in this map.
(Source: reddit.com)
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