Samarkand travel guide

Top 10 sights in Samarkand

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

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   Registan

   A square in Samarkand closed on three sides by madrasas — Ulugh Beg's of 1420, and two from the seventeenth century, one of them tiled with tigers and human-faced suns in defiance of the ban on living images. The name means the sandy place.

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2. 

   2© Arina Pan · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Gur-e Amir

   The tomb of Timur, built in 1404 for a grandson who died before him and taken over by the conqueror himself a year later. Its fluted turquoise dome and gilded interior set the pattern that Mughal builders carried to Agra.

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3. 

   3© David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada · CC BY 2.0

   Bibi-Khanym Mosque

   The mosque Timur built between 1399 and 1405 with the spoils of his Indian campaign, and the largest of its age anywhere — a portal thirty-five metres high and a courtyard the size of a football pitch. It began collapsing almost at once; the Soviet restoration rebuilt much of what stands.

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4. 

   4© Vaurien · CC BY-SA 3.0 de

   Shah-i-Zinda

   Necropolis in Samarkand built up between the eleventh and nineteenth centuries along a stepped lane. Its eleven mausoleums, faced in blue tile, hold Timur's female relatives.

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   Afrasiyab

   The city that existed before the Mongols destroyed it in 1220, now a range of grassed mounds north of the Bibi-Khanym mosque. Excavation found the seventh-century Ambassadors' Fresco, showing delegations from China, Korea and the steppe, which is displayed in the museum on the site.

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   Afrasiab Museum of Samarkand

   A museum on the site of Afrasiab, the city Genghis Khan destroyed in 1220 and which was never rebuilt. Its centrepiece is a seventh-century wall painting of ambassadors arriving from China, Korea and the steppe.

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7. 

   7© Akhemen · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Hazrat-Hyzr Mosque

   A mosque on the hill facing Shah-i-Zinda, rebuilt in the mid-nineteenth century on a site used since the Arab conquest, with a carved and painted wooden portico. Uzbekistan's first president is buried beside it.

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   Khodja Doniyor Mausoleum

   A mausoleum on the edge of the Afrasiyab mounds holding what is said to be an arm of the prophet Daniel, brought from Susa by Timur. The tomb is reputed to lengthen each year, so the coffin was extended to eighteen metres, and Jews, Christians and Muslims all come to it.

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9. 

   9© Alaexis · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Al Bukhari Memorial

   The shrine of Imam al-Bukhari, who compiled the collection of hadith that Sunni Islam holds most authoritative and died near here in 870. The complex over his grave was rebuilt on a large scale in 1998.

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10. 

    10© Bobyrr (changes by Rabanus Flavus) · CC BY-SA 4.0

    St. John the Baptist Church, Samarkand

    The Catholic church of Samarkand, built between 1912 and 1916 for Polish and other European Catholics brought here under Russian rule. It was closed for most of the Soviet period and returned to the parish in the 1990s.

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   Kafir-kala

   A Sogdian fortress twelve kilometres south of Samarkand, guarding the oasis from the sixth to the eighth century. Excavation found burnt wooden panels and clay sealings, the wreckage of its destruction during the Arab conquest.

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2. 

   2© Bobyrr · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Shahrisabz Museum of History and Material Culture

   A museum in Shahrisabz, where Timur was born, holding tile and stone from his Ak-Saray palace along with the archaeology of the surrounding valley.

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3. 

   3© Nikolay Trebukchin · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Ishrat-Khana Mausoleum

   A Timurid mausoleum built in the 1460s for women of the royal house. Much of it has fallen, but the surviving dome structure is studied for how its builders carried a double shell on intersecting arches.

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4. 

   4© Jamshid Avazovich Djurakulov · CC BY-SA 4.0

   State Museum of Culture History of Uzbekistan

   A museum in Samarkand covering the cultural history of Uzbekistan, from the Sogdians through the Timurids to the present, in objects drawn from sites across the country.

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5. 

   5© ShHamrayev · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Khodzha Abdu-Derun Mausoleum

   A shrine east of the old city wall built over the grave of an eleventh-century Arab judge sent to Samarkand, and rebuilt repeatedly since the twelfth century. A pool and old plane trees stand in front of it.

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   Unknown Mausoleum-2

   One of the mausolea in the Shah-i-Zinda necropolis at Samarkand whose occupant has never been identified. It is dated to the fifteenth century, and its tilework matches that of its neighbours closely enough that the same workshop is assumed.

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   Zoological Museum of Samarkand State University

   The zoological museum of Samarkand State University, holding specimens of the animals of the Central Asian deserts and mountains. It functions as a record of the region's biological survey work as much as a display.

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   Ustad Ali Nasafi Mausoleum

   One of the tombs in the Shah-i-Zinda avenue at Samarkand, unusual in carrying the name of the craftsman who built it — signed work is rare in medieval Central Asian architecture.

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