Holiday in Samarkand

About Samarkand

Samarkand — the name alone sounds like the echo of a caravan on the Silk Road. This legendary city in Uzbekistan has been a crossroads of civilizations for centuries, a place where East meets West, and the capital of an empire that stretched from Turkey to India. Today, Samarkand is one of the best-preserved examples of Islamic architecture and a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Registan Square is the heart of Samarkand and one of the most breathtaking architectural ensembles in the world. Three monumental madrasahs — the Ulugh Beg Madrasah (1420), the Sher-Dor Madrasah (1636), and the Tillya-Kori Madrasah (1660) — frame the square, creating a symphony of turquoise tiles, golden mosaics, and majestic portals. At night, the Registan shines in a light show that highlights the scale and beauty of the buildings even more impressively. The Bibi-Khanym Mosque, once the largest mosque in the Islamic world, was built on the orders of Timur (Tamerlane) to immortalize his glory. The colossal ruins and the partially restored domes still convey an impression of the overwhelming dimensions of this structure. The Gur-e-Amir Mausoleum, Timur's final resting place, impresses with its ribbed turquoise dome and an interior of onyx, jasper, and gold. Legend has it that a curse befalls anyone who opens Timur's grave — when Soviet archaeologists did so in 1941, the next day saw the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The Siab Bazaar, right next to the Bibi-Khanym Mosque, is a sensory fireworks display: mountains of spices, fresh non-bread from the tandoor oven, dried fruits in all colors, and the intoxicating scent of saffron and cumin. The non (flatbread) from Samarkand is considered the best in all of Central Asia. The Ulugh Beg Observatory, an astronomical wonder of the 15th century, housed a giant sextant with a radius of 40 meters, with which Ulugh Beg — Timur's grandson and passionate scientist — mapped the positions of over 1,000 stars, more accurately than any European of his time.