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.
That short walk is the shape of the decision here. Datong is a small city — a coal town that turned itself into a tourism town on the loess plateau — and everything you’ve come for sits in two directions: the grottoes to the west, and the rebuilt old city in the middle. You’re choosing between sleeping inside the wall, on the lanes where the temples and the food are, and sleeping out on the Yungang road, where the rates collapse and the grottoes are already on your side of town.
I did the work rather than guessing. On 18 October 2026 I pulled the published guest policy and the nightly rate for the properties in this guide. The price search returned 12 Datong properties with a rate on screen for one night, two adults, and the guest-policy check covered the same 12 properties — and every one of them, 12 out of 12, publishes “Guests from all countries/regions are welcome at this property.”
The one thing to check before booking anywhere in China: open the hotel page, find Policies → Guests Accepted, and look for the line “Guests from all countries/regions are welcome at this property.” It takes two minutes, and the background on the rule — clarified in May 2024 — plus what to do if a front desk pushes back is in our China hotel guide for foreign guests.
Planning staying in Datong for 2–8 travellers? Get a free Datong route plan — a real day-by-day route with price ranges for your group. No obligation, no payment, reply within 24 hours.
Quick Overview: Which Area Is For You?#
| Area | Best For | The Trade-off | Typical Rate (18 Oct 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inside the ancient city walls | Courtyard inns, walking the wall at dusk, dinner on foot | Cars can’t reach some lanes, and rooms are small | $36–43 |
| Daiwangfu and Gulou East Street | The busiest streets, snacks, the drum tower | Visitor traffic outside the window until late | $28–47 |
| The Huayan Temple side | The cheapest rooms inside the old city | Older buildings, plainer rooms | $17–22 |
| Mid-range and designer inns | Style, space, a proper bath | The top of the Datong price band | $65–73 |
| The Yungang road side | Early starts for the grottoes, the lowest rates anywhere | Suburban, few restaurants outside your door | $12–16 |
The spread is wide for a city this size: the cheapest bed in our check was $12 out on the Yungang road and the most expensive room $73 inside the ancient city area.
1. Inside the Ancient City Walls and the Courtyard Inns#
The old city is a walled rectangle, and the wall you see today is a reconstruction — the circuit and the main streets were rebuilt in the 2000s and 2010s, which is why it all looks so new. What isn’t new is the treasure inside it: the Huayan Temple is a Liao building from the eleventh century, and a handful of halls and the Nine Dragon Screen are the genuine survivors. Walk the top of the wall at dusk and you can take in the whole thing at once — the grey roofs, the corner towers, the hills beyond.
Sleeping inside that wall is the reason most people book here at all. The lanes go quiet at night, the courtyards are small and enclosed, and dinner is a five-minute walk. The trade-off is real: cars can’t reach many addresses, courtyard rooms are often compact and short on light, and the courtyard that’s charming in October is cold in January.
Hotels with the rates we pulled:
- Pipa Old Inn — the established courtyard name in the walled city, and the one people mean when they say they stayed in a Datong courtyard. US$37 (about ¥260). (policy line verified on 18 October 2026) Check prices on Trip.com
- Renyi Inn — an inn rather than a chain, priced within a dollar of the Pipa and the better value of the two if you want a quieter lane. US$38 (about ¥270). (policy line verified on 18 October 2026) Check prices on Trip.com
- Pinghe Yunzhu Song-Style Courtyard — a courtyard built in the style of the Song, at the same rate as the two inns above, and the one to take if the courtyard should be the point of the stay. US$43 (about ¥310). (policy line verified on 18 October 2026) Check prices on Trip.com
All three land between $37 and $43 in the same ancient city area, so the question isn’t price but which courtyard you like the look of.
2. Daiwangfu and Gulou East Street at the Centre#
Daiwangfu is the quarter around the rebuilt mansion of the Ming prince once posted here, and Gulou East Street runs off the drum tower through the middle of the tourist old city. If you want to open your door and be standing in it — snack stalls, souvenir lanes, the towers lit at night — this is where you stay, and it’s where the widest choice of rooms sits.
The trade-off is the view, which is other visitors, and the noise, which lasts until the lanes empty. If you sleep lightly, ask for an inner-courtyard room rather than a street-facing one; almost every property here has both.
It’s also the most competitive slice of the market. Our three hotels in this quarter ran from $28 to $47, so the same streets buy you a simple guesthouse room or a polished boutique one depending on what you want to spend.
Hotels with the rates we pulled:
- Yunmengge Nancheng Guanyu Siheyuan Homestay (Datong Ancient City Gulou East Street) — a courtyard homestay on the east side of the drum tower, and the most character per dollar in the quarter from our check. US$36 (about ¥260). (policy line verified on 18 October 2026) Check prices on Trip.com
- Lao Chenggen Courtyard Homestay (Daiwangfu, Datong Ancient City) — the budget option in its own name, a few steps off Daiwangfu and a third cheaper than the homestay above. US$28 (about ¥200). (policy line verified on 18 October 2026) Check prices on Trip.com
- Datong OneTwo Hotel (Datong Ancient City Daiwangfu branch) — the most expensive room in this quarter and the most conventional, for anyone who wants a reception desk and a lift inside the old city. US$47 (about ¥330). (policy line verified on 18 October 2026) Check prices on Trip.com
Pick the OneTwo for predictability, the Lao Chenggen for the cheapest courtyard inside the wall, and the Yunmengge if you want the building itself to feel like the trip.
3. The Huayan Temple Side and the Cheapest Rooms in the Old City#
The western quarter of the old city is where the oldest thing you could sleep beside actually stands. The Huayan Temple was built under the Liao in the eleventh century, its halls survive from that period, and the Nine Dragon Screen — a Ming glazed wall carrying nine dragons — is a few minutes away. You’re still inside the wall and still walkable to the drum tower, but this is a plainer, more residential slice of the old town, and the rates say so.
This is where the inside-the-wall bargain sits. Two of the cheapest rooms in our entire Datong check are here, at $17 and $22, and both are honest city hotels rather than courtyard conversions: expect air conditioning, a firm bed, a kettle, and not much else.
Hotels with the rates we pulled:
- Datong City Holiday Hotel (Datong Ancient City Huayan Temple branch) — the cheapest room inside the walls from our check, and a plain, honest city hotel named for the temple it sits near. US$17 (about ¥120). (policy line verified on 18 October 2026) Check prices on Trip.com
- Datong Weidu International Hotel — the step up in the same quarter, still cheap, with the word international in the name and the larger building to match. US$22 (about ¥160). (policy line verified on 18 October 2026) Check prices on Trip.com
Our sample caught only these two on the temple side, so treat them as anchors rather than as the whole of it.
4. Mid-Range Comfort and the Designer Inns#
The top of the Datong market is small and it’s mostly about design. The two properties at the head of our check cost $65 and $73, and both are doing the same thing — turning the Northern Wei, the dynasty that carved the Yungang caves, into a style. Grey brick, timber frames, a courtyard, a designer lamp, a room finished to a standard the cheap end of town doesn’t attempt.
What you’re not buying is a better location. Both sit in the ancient city area, on the same lanes as the $17 rooms, so the extra money goes into the room and the building rather than into the map. In a cold month that isn’t a trivial thing: a well-heated, well-sealed room in Datong in December is worth real money.
Hotels with the rates we pulled:
- Garden Yun — the larger of the two top-end properties and the one with grounds rather than just a courtyard; the mid-point of the premium band. US$65 (about ¥460). (policy line verified on 18 October 2026) Check prices on Trip.com
- Floral Hotel Felicity Xiaomanju Northern Wei Designer Inn (Datong Ancient City) — the most expensive room in our whole Datong check and the most stylised: Northern Wei motifs, a small courtyard, a design-led interior. US$73 (about ¥520). (policy line verified on 18 October 2026) Check prices on Trip.com
Between the two I’d take the designer inn for one night of a trip and the Garden Yun for a longer stay, because grounds wear better over four days than a single perfect room does.
5. The Yungang Road Side Toward the Grottoes#
When I sorted our twelve hotels by area, two came back with no neighbourhood label at all: Yong Ya Homestay (Yungang road branch) and the Four Seasons Holiday Hotel (Datong Yungang Road). These are roadside properties on the western edge of the city, along the road out toward the caves, and they’re the cheapest rooms in the whole check by a wide margin — $12 and $16.
The case for sleeping out here is simple, and it isn’t about atmosphere. The grottoes are a short ride west of the old city, a bus or a taxi rather than a walk, and a hotel on the Yungang road puts you on the right side of town for an early ticket gate instead of a cross-city journey in the morning. Then you come back into the walled city for dinner, which is a taxi ride you’d have taken anyway.
What you give up is the evening: no old-town lane outside the door, no courtyard, no snack street. You’re sleeping next to a road because the road goes where you’re going.
Hotels with the rates we pulled:
- Yong Ya Homestay (Yungang Road branch) — the cheapest room in our entire Datong check, and a homestay in name rather than a courtyard property; on the $12 end of the market that’s what you’re buying. US$12 (about ¥90). (policy line verified on 18 October 2026) Check prices on Trip.com
- Four Seasons Holiday Hotel (Datong Yungang Road) — four dollars more than the homestay and a conventional hotel building, which for a grottoes morning is the more comfortable of the two. US$16 (about ¥110). (policy line verified on 18 October 2026) Check prices on Trip.com
I’d take one of these only for a single night aimed at the caves, or if you’re driving and want a car park rather than a lane a car can’t enter.
Quick Budget Breakdown#
| Budget | What You Get | Example Hotels From Our Check | Nightly Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Budget | A bed under $30, out on the Yungang road or in a plain old-city hotel | Yong Ya Homestay, Four Seasons Holiday Hotel, Datong City Holiday Hotel, Datong Weidu International Hotel, Lao Chenggen Courtyard Homestay | $12–28 |
| Mid | A courtyard room inside the wall, with the old city on foot | Yunmengge Nancheng Guanyu Siheyuan Homestay, Pipa Old Inn, Renyi Inn, Pinghe Yunzhu Song-Style Courtyard, Datong OneTwo Hotel | $36–47 |
| Premium | The designed rooms at the top of the Datong market | Garden Yun, Floral Hotel Felicity Xiaomanju Northern Wei Designer Inn | $65–73 |
Every rate is from our own check on 18 October 2026 — one night, two adults, USD, converted here at roughly ¥7.1 to the dollar — and they’re indicative. Datong is a seasonal town: the old city fills for the autumn holidays and the winter is long and thin, so the same courtyard room can cost less in January than in October. See our China travel budget guide for what the rest of a Shanxi trip costs.
Practical Tips for Datong#
Know which station your train uses. High-speed services from Beijing run into Datong South, outside the walled centre, while the older Datong Railway Station is a different building closer in. They’re not the same address and not within walking distance of each other, so check the station name on your ticket before you pick a room near it. Ticket buying for foreigners is covered in our China high-speed rail guide.
Give the grottoes a full morning. Yungang is a paid, timed-entry site and the caves face the light, so an early slot is the one worth having. It’s a short ride west of the old city by bus or taxi rather than a walk, and you want two to three hours inside the site, not counting the return. Going with a driver is the simplest version of that day — the kind of thing we quote for people directly through plan your trip.
Build a second day for the hanging monastery. The temple pinned to the cliff face east of Datong, and the wooden pagoda south of it at Yingxian, are the standard companion day trip and both are well outside the city. Each is a paid entry, and each is far enough that you don’t want to bolt one onto a grottoes morning.
Pack for a cold plateau, not for a pleasant one. Datong sits above 1,000 metres on the northern loess plateau and its winters are severe: long, dry, windy and well below freezing, with snow that stays. Spring is dusty and windy. Autumn is the reward — clear light, cold mornings, and the best month to walk the wall at dusk.
Pay the way locals do, and get online before you land. Alipay and WeChat Pay cover the buses, the taxis, the grottoes ticket counter and the snack lanes, and both accept foreign cards once you’ve set them up; our WeChat Pay and Alipay guide walks through it, and the 2026 internet guide covers the SIM or eSIM you’ll want for maps and driver messages. Taxis are cheap here but hard to flag at night in the lanes, so the DiDi setup guide is worth ten minutes.
Where Datong sits in a longer route. It’s the northern anchor of a Shanxi run: Beijing is a short high-speed hop away, Pingyao and the walled towns are south through Taiyuan, and Xi’an is the next big stop beyond that — our Xi’an hotel guide covers the other end of that leg. The two-week China itinerary puts Datong in sequence with the rest of the country, and the China travel checklist is the paperwork list you want before the first train.
FAQ#
Do Datong hotels accept foreign guests? Yes, and we checked rather than assumed. On 18 October 2026 we pulled the published guest policy for the properties in this guide and all 12, 12 out of 12, carried the line “Guests from all countries/regions are welcome at this property.” Our price search the same day also returned 12 properties with a rate on screen. Chinese hotels haven’t been permitted to refuse foreign nationals for lacking foreign-related qualifications since the rule was clarified in May 2024. Check the line anyway, and see our full guide if a desk pushes back.
Which area is best for a first visit to Datong? Inside the ancient city walls — the Daiwangfu and Gulou East Street quarter if you want the streets outside your door, or the Huayan Temple side if you’d rather spend $17 than $47 on the room. Both put the old city on foot. Book the Yungang road only if the caves are the whole reason you came and you want an early start.
How do I get to the Yungang Grottoes from the ancient city? It’s a short ride west of the old city rather than a walk — a local bus or a taxi, both cheap. Go early, because entry is timed and the morning light in the caves is the reason to be there. Two to three hours on site covers the main caves without rushing.
Is it worth staying inside the ancient city walls? For most people, yes. The walled old city is where the food, the temples and the evening walk are, and the spread of rates inside it — $17 to $73 in our check — means you can stay there on almost any budget. What you give up is convenience for cars: some lanes are pedestrian, and you walk the last stretch with your bags.
How cold does Datong get, and when should I go? This is a plateau city above 1,000 metres and the winter is long and severe, well below freezing for weeks at a time. Spring is windy and dusty. Autumn is the season I’d pick, for clear light, cold mornings and the best conditions at the wall and the grottoes.
How do I get from Datong South railway station to the ancient city? Datong South is the high-speed station and it sits outside the walled centre, while the older Datong Railway Station is a separate building closer in. From either one a taxi into the old city is short and cheap, and buses run too. Check which station your ticket names, because they aren’t in the same place.
My Final Recommendation#
- First trip, two or three nights: inside the ancient city walls. Yunmengge Nancheng Guanyu Siheyuan Homestay at $36 is the character pick in the Daiwangfu and Gulou quarter, Pipa Old Inn at $37 is the established courtyard name, and Datong City Holiday Hotel at $17 on the Huayan Temple side is the room to take if you’d rather spend the money on the grottoes.
- Best rate-to-comfort ratio: Renyi Inn at $38, a courtyard inn priced below the boutique rooms in the same lanes.
- One splurge: Floral Hotel Felicity Xiaomanju Northern Wei Designer Inn at $73, the top of the Datong market.
- Grottoes above everything: Four Seasons Holiday Hotel (Datong Yungang Road) at $16, four dollars more than the cheapest bed in the city and on the right side of town for an early ticket gate.
If you’re building a Shanxi trip around the caves rather than around a hotel — Datong inside the wall for two nights, the hanging monastery and the wooden pagoda on the middle day, then south through Pingyao — that’s what we quote for people directly. Our China private tour cost guide shows what that usually comes to, and tell us your dates and group size and we’ll come back with a plan.
Browse all Datong hotels with current prices →
Last updated: 18 October 2026. Hotel rates are from our own check on that date (one night, two adults, USD) and are indicative only — confirm live prices before booking.