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Ulan-Ude is the capital of the Republic of Buryatia in eastern Siberia, set where the Uda River flows into the Selenga about 100 kilometers southeast of Lake Baikal. With about 438,000 people at the 2021 census, it is one of the largest cities in the Russian Far East.
The city began in 1666 as a small fort called Udinskoye on the Uda. It was renamed Verkhneudinsk in 1783, grew into a busy trading town with yearly fairs on its market square, and took the Buryat name Ulan-Ude in 1934. Russian merchant streets, an 18th-century cathedral and Soviet squares now share the city with Buddhist temples.
Visitors come to see the giant head of Lenin on the main square, walk the pedestrian part of Lenin Street, and visit a hilltop datsan with a golden Buddha. Museums of Buryat art, history and folk life, along with opera and drama in Buryat and Russian, make it a good base for trips to Baikal.
The Lenin Head on the Square of Soviets in Ulan-Ude is the largest sculpted head of Lenin in the world, 7.7 meters high and weighing 42 tonnes, set on a granite pedestal 6.3 meters tall. Made by the sculptors G. V. and Y. G. Neroda, it was unveiled on 5 November 1971.
The Square of Soviets is the main ceremonial square of Ulan-Ude, measuring 240 by 130 meters on the hill of old Verkhneudinsk where the roads to Irkutsk and Chita once began. The House of Soviets of Buryatia and the giant Lenin Head stand on its east side, facing the open square.
Lenin Street is the central street of Ulan-Ude, running for 1,550 meters from the riverside past the Odigitrievsky Cathedral up to the Square of Soviets. It has borne Lenin's name since 1924, and its 360-meter pedestrian section, opened in 2004, is known as the Ulan-Ude Arbat.
Revolution Square was the market square of old Verkhneudinsk, where fairs were held twice a year from 1786. Around it stand the stone trading rows of the Gostiny Dvor, built from 1804 to 1856, and the Chapel of Saint Innocent of Irkutsk, demolished in 1930 and rebuilt in its old form in 2003.
The Rinpoche Bagsha Datsan is a Buddhist temple on Bald Mountain in Ulan-Ude, founded by the Tibetan lama Yeshe Lodoy Rinpoche and opened on 27 June 2004. It houses a gilded bronze Buddha 6 meters high, the largest in Russia, and its grounds have eight stupas and a great prayer bell added in 2009.
The Odigitrievsky Cathedral was built in 1741-1785 as the first stone building of Verkhneudinsk, now Ulan-Ude, on the right bank of the Uda near its mouth. A fine example of Siberian Baroque in Transbaikalia, it is the cathedral of the Orthodox diocese, with a bell tower on its west side.
The Buryat Opera and Ballet Theatre in Ulan-Ude moved into its grand 718-seat building in 1952, designed by the architect A. Fyodorov and crowned by the sculpture group Horsemen with a flag by A. I. Timin. The company dates from 1939 and was named an academic theater in 1979.
The Khotsa Namsarayev Buryat Drama Theatre in Ulan-Ude is the oldest drama theater of Buryatia, founded in 1932 and opened with the play Proryv by Namzhil Baldano. It stages plays in both Buryat and Russian, from works by Buryat writers to Shakespeare, Moliere and Goldoni.
The Ethnographic Museum of the Peoples of Transbaikalia in Ulan-Ude is one of the largest open-air museums in Russia, opened on 19 August 1968. Its 37 hectares hold more than 40 old buildings and over 11,000 objects, including a church from Nikolsk and a Buddhist temple from the Tamcha datsan.
The Sampilov Art Museum in Ulan-Ude is the largest museum of Buryat art in Russia, first opened to visitors in January 1946 and named in 1966 after the painter Tsyrenzhap Sampilov. Its collection includes Buryat silver, horsehair tapestries and Russian paintings of the 19th century.
The Khangalov Museum of the History of Buryatia in Ulan-Ude grew from a museum founded in 1919, and among its first exhibits was a wall clock made by the Decembrist Nikolay Bestuzhev in exile. Its first displays opened in 1921 in the old Real School on Lenin Street, and it has grown ever since.
The Museum of Nature of Buryatia in Ulan-Ude opened in 1983, based on the nature department of the old local history museum. Its five halls show the zoology, botany, geology and fossils of Buryatia and Lake Baikal, and it runs exhibitions, lectures and nature programs for children.
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