The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Uzbekistan
8 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful sacred places in Uzbekistan are Gur-e Amir, Kalta Minor and Samanid Mausoleum. The list covers 8 sacred places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Uzbekistan lies across the old Silk Road, and its oasis cities of Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva were rebuilt again and again by rulers who wanted to be remembered in brick and tile. Without much stone or timber, builders turned fired brick into ornament, then covered it in glazed tilework of turquoise and lapis blue. The Samanids, Timur and his successors, and the khans of the 19th century each left mosques, minarets and mausoleums that still define the skyline.
The Samanid Mausoleum in Bukhara, from the late 9th or early 10th century, is one of the oldest surviving monuments of Islamic architecture in Central Asia, its walls woven from patterned baked brick. Close by, the Kalyan Minaret of Po-i-Kalyan has stood since 1127, said to have impressed even Genghis Khan. In Samarkand, Gur-e Amir holds Timur's tomb under a ribbed blue dome, and the Bibi-Khanym Mosque, built after his Indian campaign, was among the largest mosques of its age.
Later centuries brought other forms. The Bolo Haouz Mosque of 1712 in Bukhara fronts a pool with a porch of slender carved wooden columns, and Chor Minor sets four small turquoise-capped towers on a gatehouse. In Khiva, the Juma Mosque is a forest of more than two hundred carved wooden pillars, some centuries older than the hall itself, and Kalta Minor stands squat and unfinished, wrapped from base to top in glazed tiles.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gur-e Amir | Mausoleum | ✓ |
| 2 | Kalta Minor | Mosque | |
| 3 | Samanid Mausoleum | Mausoleum | |
| 4 | Bolo Haouz Mosque | Mosque | |
| 5 | Bibi-Khanym Mosque | Mosque | |
| 6 | Po-i-Kalyan | Mosque | |
| 7 | Chor Minor | Mosque | |
| 8 | Juma Mosque, Khiva | Mosque |
01 Gur-e Amir
Uzbekistan · 3.2 km from Samarkand39.648° N 66.969° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Arina Pan · CC BY-SA 4.0 The mausoleum was begun in 1403 for Muhammad Sultan, Timur's grandson and chosen heir, who died suddenly on campaign. Timur had prepared a more modest tomb for himself in his home town of Shahrisabz, but when he died in 1405 on his way to invade China, the mountain passes to Shahrisabz were blocked by snow, and he was buried here in the still-unfinished building.
Did you know? Timur was buried at the feet of his spiritual mentor, Sheikh Mir Sayyid Baraka, to whose prayers he credited his conquests.
02 Kalta Minor
Uzbekistan · 1.4 km from Khiva41.378° N 60.358° E
Image by LoggaWiggler from Pixabay The minaret was commissioned by Muhammad Amin Khan, ruler of the Khanate of Khiva, alongside the large madrasa that bears his name, and it is sometimes treated as part of that complex. 2 metres across that would taper sharply as it rose. Work began in 1852, but in 1855, when the tower had reached about 29 metres, the khan was killed in battle near Sarakhs during a campaign against the Turkmens, and construction stopped for good.
Did you know? One of its poetic inscriptions carries the Hijri date 1271, corresponding to 1855, the year construction stopped.
03 Samanid Mausoleum
Uzbekistan · 2.5 km from Bukhara39.777° N 64.401° E
Image by LoggaWiggler from Pixabay The mausoleum is barely more than nine metres on each side, yet it holds the eye for a long time. Its form — a cube crowned by a hemispherical dome, with four identical arched façades — recalls the chahar taq plan of pre-Islamic Zoroastrian fire temples, while inside, arched squinches turn the square into an octagon to carry the round dome, a solution that later Islamic architecture made its own. The real marvel is the surface.
Did you know? At the base the walls are roughly 1.8 metres thick, and all four faces lean slightly inward as they rise.
04 Bolo Haouz Mosque
Uzbekistan · 1.9 km from Bukhara39.778° N 64.407° E
Image by LoggaWiggler from Pixabay Bukhara, an oasis city on the old caravan routes of Central Asia, has kept its historic centre, which is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The mosque was built in 1712, funded by the mother of Abulfayz Khan, the ruler of the time, together with the octagonal pool, or hauz, that gives it its name — "the mosque by the pool". Such reservoirs once supplied the city's neighbourhoods with water.
Did you know? The two outermost columns of the iwan were designed differently from the rest to frame a ceremonial entrance.
05 Bibi-Khanym Mosque
Uzbekistan · 3.2 km from Samarkand39.661° N 66.980° E
Image by LoggaWiggler from Pixabay The scale is still overwhelming. The walls enclose a rectangle about 167 by 109 metres, oriented towards Mecca, and you enter through a portal some 35 metres high into a vast courtyard. Opposite rises the main sanctuary, its great dome about 40 metres high, hidden from the courtyard behind the huge framed arch of its iwan; two smaller domed halls face each other across the long sides, completing the classic four-iwan plan.
Did you know? The mosque was meant to hold the entire male population of Samarkand for Friday prayers at one time.
06 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 minaret's beauty is all in its brick. Its builders laid the bricks in a series of narrow horizontal bands, some straight, some diagonal, mixed with geometric patterns and Kufic lettering, so that the shaft is wrapped in texture that changes with the angle of the sun; only one frieze carries blue glaze. At the top, a cylindrical lantern opens in sixteen arches beneath a stalactite cornice.
Did you know? Its bricks were laid with gypsum mortar that over the centuries fused with them into a near-monolithic mass, which helps explain its survival.
07 Chor Minor
Uzbekistan · 0.6 km from Bukhara39.775° N 64.427° E
ElenaLitera · CC BY-SA 4.0 Bukhara, for centuries one of the great centres of learning on the Silk Road, preserves a historic core of mosques, madrasas, caravanserais and pools that is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, and Chor Minor stands in a lane northeast of the Lyab-i Hauz ensemble.
Did you know? The building is also known as the Madrasa of Khalif Niyaz-kul, after the merchant who paid for it in 1807.
08 Juma Mosque, Khiva
Uzbekistan · 1.5 km from Khiva41.378° N 60.360° E
Adam Harangozó · CC BY-SA 4.0 A mosque stood on this site from at least the tenth century, but the present building is a reconstruction of 1788–89. Its builders reused columns from earlier structures, and that is the joy of the place: the pillars are of different ages and different hands.
Did you know? The mosque has no portal, no dome, no galleries and no courtyard, an unusual plan for a major Central Asian Friday mosque.
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 sacred places in Uzbekistan?
- On our list, Gur-e Amir ranks first, followed by Kalta Minor and Samanid Mausoleum.
- Where is Timur buried?
- Timur, also known as Tamerlane, is buried in the Gur-e Amir mausoleum in Samarkand, under a slab of dark green jade, alongside his sons and grandsons, including the astronomer Ulugh Beg.
- Why was Kalta Minor never finished?
- The minaret was begun around 1851 by Muhammad Amin Khan of Khiva, who meant it to be the tallest in the region. He was killed in battle in 1855 and work stopped, leaving the broad, short tower seen today.
- What is the oldest building in Bukhara?
- The Samanid Mausoleum, built in the late 9th or early 10th century as the tomb of the Samanid dynasty, is the oldest.
- How many sacred places are on this list in Uzbekistan?
- The list covers 8 sacred places.