Bukhara

Why Bukhara works

Bukhara's old city is compact enough to explore entirely on foot, and dense enough with monuments to fill three unhurried days. The Kalyan Minaret, a 47-metre tapering tower of patterned brickwork completed in 1127, so impressed Genghis Khan that he reportedly spared it when he razed the rest of the city in 1220; it still anchors the Poi Kalyan complex, flanked by the Kalyan Mosque and Mir-i-Arab Madrasa. The Ark fortress, Bukhara's citadel for over a millennium, held the emirate's throne room and treasury until 1920 and today houses museums within its mud-brick ramparts. Three domed trading arcades — the Toki Zargaron, Toki Telpak Furushon and Toki Sarrafon — still shelter jewellers, hat-makers and money-changers under vaulted brick roofs unchanged since the 16th century, a rare case of a Silk Road bazaar still trading in its original form rather than as a recreation. The Lyabi-Hauz plaza, centred on a 400-year-old mulberry-shaded pool, is Bukhara's social heart, ringed by teahouses and two of the city's finest madrasas. Bukhara's carpets, suzani embroidery and miniature paintings are sold from workshops rather than souvenir stalls, and the city's slower pace compared to Samarkand makes it the better base for absorbing Uzbekistan's Silk Road architecture in depth.

Trip Snapshot

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