What is the capital city of Mongolia, located between Russia and China?

Ulaanbaatar is the capital city of Mongolia, the country between Russia and China.

The city stands in the Tuul River valley in north-central Mongolia, at an elevation of roughly 1,300 metres. It is by far Mongolia’s largest urban centre and the country’s political, economic, cultural, and transportation hub. A substantial share of Mongolia’s population lives in the capital and its surrounding districts.

Ulaanbaatar began as a mobile monastic settlement in the seventeenth century. Its location changed several times before the settlement became permanently established at its present site in the eighteenth century. The city was known as Urga in many Western sources until the twentieth century.

The modern name means “Red Hero” in Mongolian and was adopted in 1924 after Mongolia became a people’s republic. The spelling Ulan Bator is also encountered in older English writing, but Ulaanbaatar is the standard modern transliteration. Winters there are famously severe, making it one of the world’s coldest national capitals.