How many days do you need in Datong?

Short answer: one full day covers the essentials, two days is comfortable, and three
lets you include the countryside. The right answer depends less on how much you like
temples than on how far you are willing to drive — the famous sites outside the city are each an
hour or so away in different directions.

One day: the essentials

This is the classic Datong day, and honestly it is a very good day:

• Morning — Grottes de Yungang. Le
  UNESCO-listed Buddhist cave complex west of the city. Two to three hours does it justice, and
  morning light on the cliff face is the best of the day.
• Afternoon — the old city.
  Back inside the rebuilt city walls: Temple Huayan et
  Shanhua Temple for the Liao-dynasty wooden halls, the
  Le Mur des Neuf Dragons, and a walk along the ramparts at
  dusk.

If you arrive on an early train and leave on a late one, this is entirely doable.

Two days: add the mountains

Day two goes southeast to Hunyuan county for the
Le Temple suspendu — a monastery clinging to a cliff face —
and, if you have the legs, Mt Hengshan, one of China’s five
sacred mountains. The two are close together and pair naturally in a single day.

Our two-day highlights tour is built around exactly
this shape: grottoes and old city on day one, Hanging Temple and the mountains on day two.

Three days: the wooden pagoda and beyond

The Yingxian Wooden Pagoda — the oldest surviving wooden pagoda in China, built in 1056 — sits
south of the city in a different direction from Hunyuan again, which is why it usually needs its own
day. Three days also leaves room for the
Musée de Datong and, if the landscape interests you more
than architecture, the volcanic cones of the
Datong Volcanoes.

What usually decides it

• Passing through from Beijing? One day. The grottoes alone justify the trip.
• Into architecture and Buddhism? Two days — the old city rewards slow
  wandering.
• Photographer or first-timer with time? Three days, and you will still leave
  wanting more.

Not sure which fits the days you actually have? Tell us your dates and we
will sketch it out — most travellers overestimate how long they need to see the grottoes and
underestimate how much the old city deserves.