Bukhara, the Open-Air Museum City: Nine Centuries in One Walk

Bukhara is more than two thousand years old, and its historic centre, on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1993, holds about 140 listed monuments from the 9th to the 19th century. What makes it unusual is density. Rulers came and went, but the city kept building inside the same compact core, so the layers sit side by side rather than one on top of another.

The result is a centre you can cross on foot in half an hour. Almost everything lies on a short line from Lyabi-Hauz in the east to the Samanid park in the west, and only three sights need a car. Our plan for Bukhara in 1, 2 or 3 days puts them in order.

The oldest room of the museum is the Samanid Mausoleum, the family tomb of the dynasty that ruled from Bukhara in the 9th and 10th centuries. It is a cube of fired brick laid in patterns, so that the walls look woven. Side light in the morning brings the pattern out best.

The story goes that the tomb survived the Mongols in 1220 because floods had already buried it. A few steps away stands Chashma-Ayub, built over a spring that legend links to the prophet Job; inside is a small museum of water supply. Both are in our page on the Samanid Mausoleum and Bolo-Hauz.

The Kalyan minaret was built in 1127 and rises about 46 metres. Archaeologists dug 13 metres down without reaching the bottom of its foundations. The legend says Genghis Khan, who took the city in 1220, ordered it spared; true or not, it is one of the very few buildings in Bukhara older than the Mongol invasion.

The same century gave the city the facade of the Magoki-Attori mosque, which now sits below the level of today's street between the trading domes, a sign of how much the ground has risen around it. Inside is a carpet museum. The square at the foot of the minaret, Poi Kalyan, is in our page on Poi Kalyan.

The Ulugh Beg madrasah of 1417 is the oldest preserved madrasah in Central Asia; its carved door says that learning is a duty for every Muslim man and woman. Inside is a museum of the history of calligraphy. Opposite the minaret, the Mir-i-Arab madrasah of the 16th century still trains students: it was one of only three that kept teaching in Soviet times.

The trading domes belong to the same century. Each had its trade: Toki Sarrafon for the money-changers, Toki Zargaron for the jewellers, Toki Telpak Furushon for the hat-sellers. They were built over old street crossings, so you walk under them simply by walking through town, and in the hottest hours their shade is the best place to be.

Lyabi-Hauz, the square around a pond of about 1620, is the living room of the old town: madrasahs on three sides, teahouses with wide wooden beds by the water. Look up at the portal of the Nadir Divan-Begi madrasah: two simurgh birds carry white deer towards a sun with a human face. Images like that are rare on Islamic buildings, and guides always stop here.

The 17th-century madrasah of Abdulaziz Khan, near Ulugh Beg's, now holds a museum of woodcarving. The square, its pond and the stories around it are in Lyabi-Hauz and Chor Minor.

Opposite the Ark stands the Bolo-Hauz mosque of 1712, whose twenty carved wooden columns are reflected in its pond. Ten minutes east of Lyabi-Hauz, through quiet residential lanes, is Chor Minor, a gatehouse of 1807 with four turquoise-domed towers. The lanes are half the reason to go.

The Ark itself, on its hill with walls 16 to 20 metres high, was the seat of Bukhara's rulers until 1920; its history is in our page on the Ark of Bukhara. The last room of the museum is outside the old town: Sitorai Mohi-Hosa, the summer palace built in 1912–1918 for Emir Alim Khan, European outside and Bukharan inside.