Samarkand Weekend
Two days for Registan, Shah-i-Zinda and the living city between them.
Route line
Plan before departure
The Registan: How to Read the Square People Travel to Samarkand For
Three madrasas, two centuries between them, and one tiger that was never supposed to be there. Here's how to see Uzbekistan's most famous square as a design — not just a backdrop.
Shah-i-Zinda: The Street of the Dead With More Life Than Anywhere in Samarkand
A narrow corridor climbing uphill between tombs, where turquoise closes in from both sides. Here lie Tamerlane's relatives — and here too, by legend, a beheaded king still lives.
Gur-e-Amir: The Tomb Built for a Grandson, Made Famous by a Grandfather
Beneath a ribbed turquoise dome that became a template for the Taj Mahal, under a slab of black jade, lies a man who redrew the map of Asia. And above him, an inscription that someone dared to disturb in 1941.
Bibi-Khanym: the mosque Tamerlane built too great to stand
The Friday mosque was meant to be the grandest building in the Islamic world — a monument to a conqueror's might. And it was. Then it began to fall almost as soon as it was finished.
Uzbek Plov: How One Dish Became a Map of the Country
In Uzbekistan there's no such thing as "just plov." From whether it's light or dark, the vegetables fried or steamed, whether there are raisins in it, a local will tell you unerringly which city you're from. Plov here isn't a recipe — it's a way of reading...
What to Eat in Samarkand: A Food Guide
Samarkand astonishes with more than the Registan. It has its own plov — light, made on linseed oil — its own flatbread that doesn't go stale for weeks, and the Siab Bazaar selling the very things people ate on this land two thousand years ago. The city is...