Registan

Three tiled façades stand on three sides of an open rectangle, each one dominated by a towering portal and flanked by minarets, and the effect is less of a square than of a stage set built at the scale of a city. The name comes from Persian and means roughly "place of sand": this was the market and meeting ground at the heart of Samarkand, where crowds once gathered to hear royal proclamations announced with blasts on long copper horns, and where public executions were carried out.

The oldest of the three buildings, on the western side, is the madrasa of Ulugh Beg, raised between 1417 and 1420 by Timur's grandson, the ruler-astronomer who is said to have lectured there himself. Its great arched portal is covered with geometric ornament in glazed brick and mosaic, and in the fifteenth century it counted among the leading places of learning in the Muslim East. Two centuries later the Uzbek governor Yalangtush Bahadur added the Sher-Dor madrasa directly opposite, built between 1619 and 1636 as a near-mirror of its older neighbour. Look up at its portal: two striped big cats, lions or tigers depending on who describes them, chase small white deer across the tympanum, each carrying a rising sun with a human face on its back. Figurative images of this kind are rare on a religious building, and they gave the madrasa its name, from the word for lion or tiger.

The third side was closed between 1646 and 1660 by the Tilya-Kori madrasa, whose long two-storey façade hides a vast courtyard ringed with student cells. It was built to serve as the city's congregational mosque as well as a college, and its name, "gilded", refers to the prayer hall inside, which is lavishly gilded. Seen together, the three buildings span more than two centuries of Timurid and later Central Asian architecture, and the ensemble forms part of the UNESCO World Heritage site "Samarkand – Crossroad of Cultures", inscribed in 2001. Come in early morning or late afternoon, when the low sun rakes across the tilework and brings out the depth of the mosaic.

Getting there

The Registan lies in central Samarkand, about 1 km from the city centre. Samarkand International Airport (SKD) is roughly 5 km away. Samarkand is also linked to Tashkent by the Afrosiyob high-speed train, which covers the route in a little over two hours; from the station, taxis and city buses reach the square.