Where to Stay in Datong: Courtyards or Yungang Road

Sun, 18 Oct 2026 02:00:00 +0800

Contents

Quick overview: which area is for you?
1. Inside the ancient city walls and the courtyard inns
2. Daiwangfu and Gulou East Street at the centre
3. The Huayan Temple side and the cheapest rooms in the old city
4. Mid-range comfort and the designer inns
5. The Yungang road side toward the grottoes
Quick budget breakdown
Practical tips for Datong
FAQ
My final recommendation

My first Datong booking was made on a phone, on a train, an hour outside Beijing, and it put me inside a wall. I’d come for the Yungang Grottoes and the hanging monastery and picked a courtyard inn because the photographs looked old and the price looked low. I’ve been travelling in China for a decade, and what I hadn’t understood is that Datong’s old city is a real, walled, largely pedestrian place, and that my taxi would stop at a gate and I’d walk the last stretch over stone flags with a suitcase, to a doorway with two lanterns where someone was waiting with a key.

Datong on China Travel Guide

Where to Stay in Datong: Courtyards or Yungang Road