Fifteen minutes before sunset the west face of Tilya-Kori catches the last light of the day, and every tile that has held that light for six hundred years does it again. Ulugh Beg (1420), Sher-Dor (1636), Tilya-Kori (1660) — three centuries, three rulers, one square that Lord Curzon called 'the noblest public square in the world' in 1889.
Some places just are.
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Samarkand: 2,750 years of history, etymology, and monuments
Alexander the Great called it Marakanda in 329 BCE. Timur made it his imperial capital in 1370. Ulugh Beg measured the year to within a minute here in 1437. The Registan is still the noblest public square in Islamic architecture — 12 sections tracing everything Samarkand is and has been.
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Samarkand
The turquoise crossroads of empires
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More from the Journal
Thirty-six steps up, thirty-six steps down.
The last workshop in the world still making mulberry-fibre paper by the 8th-century Samarkand method.
Muqarnas — the honeycomb geometry that turns a square wall into a circular dome. Fifteenth-century Timurid mathematics in blue and gold.
Featured reel — @placesandfaces_800 on Uzbekistan.