Chor Minor: the four-minaret gatehouse

Chor Minor ("four minarets" in Tajik) was built in 1807 by the Turkmen merchant Khalif Niyaz-kul as the gatehouse of a small private madrasa. The main teaching building is gone; only the gatehouse survives.

Design features: - Four corner towers, each ~19 metres tall, each topped with a different decorative motif said to represent the four world religions the wealthy merchant respected (Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism — an unverified but popular local reading). - The towers are decorative — none contains a working staircase for muezzin call to prayer. - The blue-tiled cornice bands remain remarkably intact.

It sits in a residential neighbourhood a 10-minute walk north-east of Lyabi-Hauz. There's a small charge to climb up the rooftop for a photograph; the view over Bukhara's flat old town is best in the last hour of daylight.

In 1998 one of the towers cracked and partially collapsed after heavy rain; UNESCO funded emergency repairs that finished in 1999.