The Most Beautiful Mosques in Uzbekistan
6 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful mosques in Uzbekistan are Kalta Minor, Bolo Haouz Mosque and Bibi-Khanym Mosque. The list covers 6 mosques. Last updated 13 October 2026.
The cities of Uzbekistan lay on the Silk Road, and their mosques were built with the wealth of that trade and the ambition of the rulers who controlled it. Lacking good building stone, architects in Central Asia worked in fired brick and covered it with glazed tiles in turquoise, cobalt and white; under Timur and his successors this tradition reached a monumental scale. Alongside the tiled portals runs a second tradition of wooden columns and carved ceilings, suited to a land of hot summers.
In Samarkand, Bibi-Khanym Mosque was built by Timur after his Indian campaign at the end of the fourteenth century and was among the largest mosques of its time, its huge portal and domes still dominating the old town. In Bukhara, the Po-i-Kalyan ensemble gathers the Kalyan Mosque and the Mir-i-Arab Madrasa around the Kalyan Minaret, built in the twelfth century and the city's landmark ever since. Chor Minor, a small gatehouse with four minarets crowned by blue domes, is one of Bukhara's most original buildings, while Bolo Haouz Mosque faces the city's citadel across a pool, its porch carried on slender carved wooden columns.
Khiva, a walled city in the desert, adds two more contrasts. Kalta Minor is a squat, unfinished minaret covered entirely in bands of glazed tile, planned to be far taller. The Juma Mosque is a single hall without a courtyard, its flat roof supported by a forest of more than two hundred carved wooden columns, some of them centuries older than the building itself.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kalta Minor | Mosque | |
| 2 | Bolo Haouz Mosque | Mosque | |
| 3 | Bibi-Khanym Mosque | Mosque | |
| 4 | Po-i-Kalyan | Mosque | |
| 5 | Chor Minor | Mosque | |
| 6 | Juma Mosque, Khiva | Mosque |
01 Kalta Minor
Uzbekistan · 1.4 km from Khiva41.378° N 60.358° E
Image by LoggaWiggler from Pixabay What makes Kalta Minor unique is its surface: it is the only minaret covered entirely in glazed tilework and majolica. Bands of geometric ornament in dark green, blue and white with turquoise accents run around the whole tower, which is also known as the blue minaret. Among them are inscriptions in nasta'liq script carrying verses by Muhammad Riza Ogahi, the Khivan poet and historian who watched the minaret being built; his lines compare it to the Tuba tree of paradise and to a pillar holding up the vault of heaven. A wooden staircase inside leads up from the second level.
Did you know? For Khiva's 2,500th anniversary in 1997 the minaret was restored, and majolica master Rustam Tahirov recreated its Persian inscriptions.
02 Bolo Haouz Mosque
Uzbekistan · 1.9 km from Bukhara39.778° N 64.407° E
Image by LoggaWiggler from Pixabay The iwan is the mosque's glory. About 12 metres high and 42 by 10 metres in plan, it rests on twenty wooden columns set on concrete foundations, their tops dissolving into carved muqarnas capitals painted in many colours. The tall columns of the front iwan date from 1917, when the summer mosque was reworked, and in the same year the master builder Shirin Muradov added the short minaret to one side, banded with brick and blue glazed tiles in geometric patterns. The interior decoration reflects the taste of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Did you know? The complex took two centuries to reach its final form: begun in 1712, it gained its present iwan and minaret only in 1917.
03 Bibi-Khanym Mosque
Uzbekistan · 3.2 km from Samarkand39.661° N 66.980° E
Image by LoggaWiggler from Pixabay Built too fast and too big, the mosque began to shed bricks from its dome within a few years. From the late sixteenth century it was left to decay, townspeople carried off bricks and marble, and an earthquake in 1897 brought down the inner arch of the portal; early colour photographs from the 1900s show a magnificent broken shell. Restoration began under the Soviets and a full reconstruction started in 1974, which rebuilt the domes and much of the tilework; a new restoration programme with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture was agreed in 2024. Look closely and you can still tell old brick from new, and the contrast is part of the story.
Did you know? The Castilian envoy Ruy González de Clavijo saw the mosque in 1404 and judged it the noblest building in Samarkand.
04 Po-i-Kalyan
Uzbekistan · 1.4 km from Bukhara39.776° N 64.414° E
Официальный веб-сайт Агентства культурного наследия Республики Узбекистан · CC BY 4.0 The Kalyan Mosque that faces the square today was completed in 1514–15 under Ubaydullah Khan. It is enormous — about 130 by 81 metres — and built on the classic Central Asian plan of a courtyard with four iwans, surrounded by a hypostyle arcade roofed with 288 small domes. At its end the turquoise dome of the main sanctuary rises some 30 metres. Across the square stands the Mir-i-Arab Madrasa of 1535, with its own mosque and mausoleum; it was founded by a sheikh from Yemen and has functioned as a religious school almost without interruption, which is rare in Central Asia. The square is at its most beautiful at dusk, when the brick turns honey-coloured and the domes glow against a fading sky.
Did you know? According to legend, the master builder Bako laid the foundation with a mortar mixed with camel milk, then vanished for two years until it had set hard.
05 Chor Minor
Uzbekistan · 0.6 km from Bukhara39.775° N 64.427° E
ElenaLitera · CC BY-SA 4.0 The gatehouse is a two-storey domed building. The lower floor serves as a vestibule; the upper one, reached by a staircase inside one of the towers, held the library beneath a shallow dome on a ring of simple muqarnas, and its acoustics suited the chanting of Sufi dhikr ceremonies. The other three towers were used for storage. Each tower carries a different pattern in its brick and tile decoration, and a popular interpretation sees in the motifs symbols of the faiths known in Central Asia — a cross, a fish, a Buddhist prayer wheel, alongside Zoroastrian and Islamic signs.
Did you know? According to one legend, the four towers honour the four daughters of the builder, each decorated differently.
06 Juma Mosque, Khiva
Uzbekistan · 1.5 km from Khiva41.378° N 60.360° E
Adam Harangozó · CC BY-SA 4.0 The mosque is one of the principal monuments of Itchan Kala, which UNESCO inscribed as a World Heritage Site. It lies on the main street that runs between the city's west gate, Ota Darvoza, and its east gate, Polvon Darvoza, and its minaret, about 42 metres high, is one of the vertical markers of the old town's skyline.
Did you know? The late 18th-century rebuilding was paid for by Abdurakhman Mehtar, according to the Khivan court historian Munis.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful mosques in Uzbekistan?
- On our list, Kalta Minor ranks first, followed by Bolo Haouz Mosque and Bibi-Khanym Mosque.
- Why is Kalta Minor unfinished?
- Construction stopped after the death of its patron, Muhammad Amin Khan, in 1855. Only the base of what was planned as a much taller minaret was built.
- Who built Bibi-Khanym Mosque?
- Timur, also known as Tamerlane, ordered it built in Samarkand after his campaign in India in 1399. Its name comes from a legend associating it with his chief wife.
- What is the Kalyan Minaret?
- It is the tall brick minaret at the heart of Bukhara, built in 1127 by the Karakhanid ruler Arslan Khan. Its bands of patterned brickwork make it one of the finest early monuments of Central Asian architecture.
- How many mosques are on this list in Uzbekistan?
- The list covers 6 mosques.