Registan

Registan means "sandy place", and the square was a market and gathering ground long before its present buildings. Ulugh Beg built the first madrasa on the west side in the fifteenth century, when he governed Samarkand and taught astronomy and mathematics here.

The other two buildings came in the seventeenth century under the governor Yalangtush Bahadur. Sher-Dor, facing Ulugh Beg's madrasa, carries tilework of lions chasing deer under a human-faced sun. Tilla-Kari, on the north side, served as both a madrasa and the city's main Friday mosque, and its prayer hall is covered in gilding.

Many former student cells now hold craft shops. The square is lit in the evening, and it is worth seeing both in daylight, when the tile detail is clearest, and after dark.