10 best places to visit in Samarkand

Not 10, even 11 of the most interesting places to visit in Samarkand.

Start at the Registan

Three madrasas on three sides of a square: Ulugbek (1417–1420), Sher-Dor (1619–1636) and Tilya-Kori. Come twice — once in the morning for the tilework, once at dusk when the buses have gone.

Then the rest

• Gur-e-Amir — the crypt of Amir Temur and the Timurid dynasty
• Bibi-Khanym mosque — built in 1399, and once the largest in the Islamic world
• Shah-i-Zinda — more than twenty mausoleums along one narrow street of the dead
• Ulugbek's observatory — where a sultan measured the year to within a minute
• Siab bazaar — bread, dried fruit and the only honest lunch in the old town
• Afrosiab museum — the murals from the city Genghis Khan destroyed
• Khovrenko winery — a tasting in the museum of a 19th-century vintner
• El-Merosi theatre — historical costume, performed rather than displayed
• Konigil paper mill — silk paper, made the way it was in the 8th century
• Hazrat Hizr mosque — for the terrace, and the view over the whole city