SAMARKAND
The old city is small: from the Registan almost everything below is a ten to twenty minute walk. Two rules and the day works — start early, and give the middle of a summer day to lunch and shade. All of it is on the city tour we run ourselves.
Three madrasahs around one square, built between the 15th and the 17th century — the picture most people already have of Uzbekistan. Inside Tilya-Kori there is a gilded prayer hall; in the courtyards, workshops. Come when it opens: by ten the square belongs to the groups.
A narrow street of mausoleums climbing the hill. Much of the 14th and 15th century tilework was never repainted, so the colour you see is its own. It is a living place of pilgrimage — shoulders and knees covered.
Timur’s mausoleum under a ribbed turquoise dome. The room inside is small, which is why it feels crowded from mid-morning on; early or late in the day it is nearly yours alone.
The mosque was built at the limit of what 14th century engineering could hold, and the limit gave way; what stands now is a partial restoration and still enormous. The city’s main bazaar is right behind it: bread out of the tandyr, dried melon, nuts by the kilo.
The newest thing in Samarkand: a quarter built from scratch for craft workshops, tea houses and restaurants, which comes alive after sunset. Not ancient and not pretending to be — this is where the city goes out.
On the hill north of the centre: what is left of the huge sextant with which Ulugh Beg measured the length of the year to within a minute in the 1420s, and a few minutes away the Afrosiyob museum, with wall paintings from the city Genghis Khan destroyed.
Everything on this page in one day, with a guide and a photographer who knows where the light is at that hour.
All of it we book ourselves. Write once with your dates and you get an answer with a price, not another search form.