Ichan-Kala, Khiva: history, legends and how to see the walled town

Khiva has two rings of walls. The outer town, Dishan-Kala, grew up around the inner one, Ichan-Kala, the “inner fortress”: a rectangle of about 650 by 400 metres, 26 hectares in all. You can walk across it in twenty minutes.

Inside are more than 50 historic monuments and about 250 old houses, most of them from the 18th and 19th centuries. Khiva became the capital of Khorezm in 1598, after the Amu Darya changed its course and left the old capital, Gurgench, without water. The khans who ruled from here for the next three centuries filled the inner town with mosques, madrasahs and palaces.

The walls are built of sun-dried clay brick, 8 to 10 metres high and 5 to 6 metres thick, and run for about 2.2 km. Round towers jut out roughly every 30 metres, and the top is crenellated like a row of teeth. A moat once ran along them; on the south side you can still trace it in the ground. The walls were repaired and rebuilt many times, but parts of their foundations are among the oldest things in Khiva.

Four gates face the four points of the compass:

• Ota-Darvoza, the West Gate, “Father Gate”: the main entrance, where most visitors come in and where the ticket office is.
• Bogcha-Darvoza, the North Gate, “Garden Gate”: the way out to the Nurullaboy palace.
• Polvon-Darvoza, the East Gate, “Strongman’s Gate”: Allakuli Khan’s caravanserai and covered market stand beside it.
• Tosh-Darvoza, the South Gate, “Stone Gate”.

Each gate had towers on both sides and a gallery above, and the longer passages were roofed with a row of domes.

Walk in through the West Gate and it is the first thing you see: a wide turquoise drum, 14.2 metres across at the base, cut off at 29 metres as if with a knife. Muhammad Amin Khan began it in 1852 beside his madrasah, the largest in Khiva, with 130 rooms on two floors for some 260 students.

The plan was 70 to 80 metres, and some accounts give even more; the khan wanted the tallest minaret in the world. That is why the base is so wide: the tower was to narrow sharply as it rose. It is the only minaret covered entirely in glazed tiles, in bands of turquoise, green and white, and its inscriptions carry verses by the Khivan poet Ogahi.

Kunya-Ark, the “old citadel”, stands just inside the West Gate: a fortress within the fortress, about 1.2 hectares, laid out at the end of the 17th century as the seat of the khans. Over the next hundred years it filled up with a mosque, a court, a mint, an arsenal, a powder works, stables, kitchens and a harem.

Its finest room is the Kurinish-khana, the reception hall, built in 1804–1806: an iwan lined with blue and white tiles, facing a courtyard where the khan’s summer yurt was pitched. The original throne, made in 1816 and covered in silver, was taken to Moscow in 1873 and is now in the Kremlin; the one you see is a copy. The summer mosque, decorated with tiles, was added by Allakuli Khan.

The highest point of the citadel is the Ak Sheikh Bobo watchtower. Keep it for the end of the day: more on that below.

From the street it looks like nothing much: a low brick building with a flat roof, no portal, no dome and no courtyard. Inside is a single dim hall, about 55 by 46 metres, where 212 carved wooden columns in 17 rows hold up the roof; some counts give 213. Light comes only through openings in the ceiling, so the columns pass from shadow into sunlight as you walk.

The mosque is first mentioned in the 10th century by the Arab geographer al-Muqaddasi; the building you see dates from 1788–1789. Many columns are older than the walls around them. The oldest are thought to date from the 10th–11th centuries and were reused from earlier buildings, perhaps from Kath, an earlier capital of Khorezm. Carved dates on doors and columns run from 1316 to 1789. Look at the capitals and bases: no two are alike. The minaret beside the mosque is 42 metres high.

Allakuli Khan, who ruled from 1825 to 1842, changed the face of Ichan-Kala. To make room, he had part of the wall by the East Gate taken down. In its place rose a caravanserai (1832–1833), a madrasah (1834–1835) and a covered market, the tim (1836–1838). Rent from the caravanserai and the market paid for the madrasah’s library. The madrasah now houses a crafts centre.

His palace, Tash Hovli, the “stone house”, went up in the 1830s: more than 260 rooms around three courtyards. The harem was built first. Along one side of its courtyard stand five loggias on carved wooden pillars: four for the khan’s four wives and the largest for the khan. In the reception courtyard, the Ishrat-hovli, guests could pitch their yurts on two round platforms; the third courtyard, the Arz-hovli, was the court of justice. The blue and white tiles are the work of the master Abdullah Jin, and the wooden ceilings are painted red and yellow.

Khiva also tells a grim story about the palace: the first architect, Usta Nur Muhammad, said it could not be finished in two years, and the khan had him executed. His successor took eight.

Pahlavan Mahmud lived in the 13th and 14th centuries; he died in the 1320s. He came from a family of craftsmen, worked with leather, wrote poetry and was remembered as an unbeaten wrestler and a healer. Today he is the patron saint of Khiva, and wrestlers in Iran still pray to him before a bout.

By his own wish he was buried in his workshop, and a shrine grew around the grave. The building you see was raised in 1810–1825 under Muhammad Rahim Khan I. Its double dome, the largest in Khiva, is covered in turquoise tiles and topped with gilding. Several khans are buried here, and inside, the tiles carry Persian verses attributed to Mahmud himself. It is still a place of pilgrimage: cover your shoulders and knees, bring a scarf if you are a woman, and keep your voice down.

The youngest landmark of Ichan-Kala went up in 1908–1910. Islam Khoja was the first vizier of Khiva under Muhammad Rahim Khan II and his son Isfandiyar Khan, and a reformer: he paid for a hospital, a pharmacy, a post and telegraph office and secular schools.

His minaret is 56.6 metres tall, the tallest in Khiva, banded in blue, white and green tiles. The viewing platform at about 45 metres is the highest point in the old town. His madrasah is small, with 42 cells and a large domed hall, and now holds the museum of applied arts. In 1913 Islam Khoja was murdered; his reforms had made him powerful enemies at court.

Whether the minaret is open for climbing is decided on the day. The spiral staircase is narrow, dark and steep.

Ichan-Kala is not an empty open-air museum. Families still live in the old houses behind the monuments, and many make their living from crafts and visitors: guesthouses, cafés on the flat roofs, souvenir stalls, woodcarving and ceramics.

Early in the morning the lanes belong to them, and by evening, when the day groups have gone, they do again. Two rules: a house door is a private door, however photogenic, and ask before you photograph people.

• Ticket: walking the lanes is free. The museums and monuments inside are covered by one combined ticket from the office by the West Gate. Its price, how long it is valid and what it includes are set there, so ask on the spot, including whether the minaret climbs cost extra.
• Hours: the lanes are a living town and never close. The museums keep daytime hours; check them at the ticket office.
• How long: one full day plus an evening. With a second day you can add Dishan-Kala and the desert fortresses: see Khiva in 1 or 2 days.
• Best light: sunrise for empty lanes and soft light on the walls; around noon in the Juma Mosque, when sunlight falls through the roof; the last hour of the day at the Kalta-Minor, when the tiles glow.
• Sunset: climb the Ak Sheikh Bobo watchtower of the Kunya-Ark: from the top, the domes, minarets and flat clay roofs come together into one picture. A café terrace on a roof is the relaxed alternative.
• Dress: shoulders and knees covered in the Juma Mosque and at Pahlavan Mahmud, and a scarf for women; elsewhere, ordinary summer clothes are fine.
• Where to sleep: inside the walls if you can. Small hotels and guesthouses in old houses give you the lanes before the groups arrive and after they leave. More in where to stay in Uzbekistan.
• Getting there: the fast Jaloliddin Manguberdi train leaves Tashkent at 07:00 every day except Sunday and reaches Khiva at about 14:30; the station is a half-hour walk from the walls. See trains in Uzbekistan and Khiva to Bukhara.

A card for each monument, with tickets and timings, is in our guide to Bukhara and Khiva sights. For the whole city, see our Khiva city guide. With one of our guides, Ichan-Kala is the Khiva walking tour, and it is part of Khiva in 3 days, the 8-day classic tour and our other Khiva tours.

Walk out through the North Gate into Dishan-Kala and you reach the Nurullaboy palace, home of the last khans, with a reception hall finished in 1912: mirrors and chandeliers instead of tiles and carved wood.

For the evening, take a taxi to Arda Khiva, the new quarter on Lake Govuk, opened in May 2025: a promenade, a bazaar under domes, restaurants and a 3,000-seat amphitheatre by the water. After a day among the monuments, that is where we take our guests for dinner.