Uzbekistan · Samarqand Region · Samarkand
Old City of Samarkand, Samarkand — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Mud-brick lanes run off Islam Karimov Street in the Old City of Samarkand, the historic core of Samarkand, from the Registan north to Afrasiyab.
About Old City of Samarkand
Where to stay in Old City of Samarkand
Not every neighbourhood fits every trip — here's what each one is good for.
The Old City of Samarkand puts a bed inside the monument quarter rather than a ride from it, in the courtyard houses off Islam Karimov Street. Fired mud brick, a painted wooden ceiling, a garden behind the gate: that is the house type here. The Registan stands about a kilometre south of the Siab Bazaar along that street, close enough that the monuments join into a single walk.
Bibi-Khanym Mosque marks the midpoint. It suits you if you would rather walk to the tilework than drive.
About Old City of Samarkand
What are the main landmarks in Old City of Samarkand?
Registan Street meets Islam Karimov Street at the southern end of the Old City of Samarkand, and the three kilometres northeast from that corner pass the ensembles the quarter was inscribed for. Afrasiyab closes the far end. Nothing was rebuilt on its mound after 1220.
The Ulugh Beg Observatory rose beyond it in the 1420s, and its remains lay lost until the archaeologist V. L. Vyatkin dug out the trench holding its meridian arc in 1908. The seventeenth-century Namazgoh Mosque went up in brick past the city limit of its day, and the Abdi-Darun ensemble grew around a twelfth-century mausoleum in the Old Cemetery.
What is the history of Old City of Samarkand?
The Old City of Samarkand rests on two foundations rather than one. Afrasiyab, a Sogdian centre settled in the first millennium BC, was levelled by the troops of Genghis Khan in 1220 and never built over again. The replacement town went up about a kilometre southwest of the dead mound, and Timur made it his capital in the fourteenth century.
Russian forces took the citadel in 1868. Their European quarter was laid out west of the old lanes, and the Trans-Caspian Railway arrived in 1888, its first station opening that May. The quarter entered the World Heritage list in 2001.
Where is Old City of Samarkand?
The Old City of Samarkand runs northeast from Registan Street to the Samarkand Ring Road, the mound of Afrasiyab rising above the Siyob canal at the far end.
Good for
More areas in Samarkand
Updated September 2026