Museums1 km awayUNESCO World Heritage
Afrasiyab Museum
A museum on the ancient city site, built around the seventh-century Sogdian wall paintings known as the Ambassadors' Painting.
Afrasiyab
The grassy hills north of the modern city that cover ancient Samarkand, inhabited for well over a thousand years before the Mongol conquest.
ArchaeologyUNESCO World HeritageAbout 1.5 hours to see
About the place
This is where Samarkand stood in antiquity, when Greek writers called it Maracanda and Sogdian merchants ran trade across Central Asia. The city was destroyed by the Mongols in the thirteenth century and later rebuilt to the south, leaving the old site as open ground.
Today it looks like a field of dusty hills cut by excavation trenches. Walls, gates and the outline of the citadel can be traced with a guide, and the edge of the site gives wide views over the Shah-i-Zinda domes.
The finds from the excavations, including the famous Sogdian wall paintings, are shown in the Afrasiyab Museum on the site.
Sources (1)
- 1.Wikidata
Nearby
- Museums
Mausoleums1 km awayUNESCO World Heritage
Tomb of Daniel (Khoja Doniyor)
A long, low mausoleum above the Siab stream, revered by Muslims, Christians and Jews as a resting place of the prophet Daniel.
Mausoleums1 km away
Nuriddin Basir Mausoleum
A shrine built in 1997 in the Hazrat Khizr cemetery of Samarkand over the reburied grave of a blind 13th-century sheikh.
Mausoleums1 km away
Amir Burunduk Mausoleum
One of the simpler tombs at Shah-i-Zinda, from the late 14th century, said to belong to one of Timur's commanders.