Travel deep dive
Po-i-Kalyan and Bukhara's Old Town
Where Samarkand overwhelms with grand, separate monuments, Bukhara does something rarer: it survives as a whole medieval town you walk through, the most architecturally preserved Islamic city in Central Asia. Minarets, madrasas, a fortress, covered bazaars and shaded pond-squares sit within a few streets of one another, close enough that the old town reads as a single, continuous place rather than a checklist of sights.
Updated 2026-08-19
Po-i-Kalyan: Minaret, Mosque and Madrasa
The Po-i-Kalyan complex is the centre of Bukhara. Its minaret, raised in the 12th century and rising more than forty metres, was so commanding that Genghis Khan reportedly ordered it spared when he razed the rest of the city in 1220 — a story Bukharans still tell, and the reason it is sometimes called the Tower of Death from a later, grimmer use. Facing it across the plaza stand the great Kalyan Mosque and the Mir-i-Arab Madrasa, the latter still functioning as a religious school, its blue domes among the most photographed in the country.
Standing in the plaza between them, with the minaret on one side and the domes on the other, is the single defining moment of a Bukhara visit, and it is at its best in the softer light of early morning or late afternoon.
The Ark and Lyab-i-Hauz
The Ark, a vast mud-walled citadel that was the seat of Bukhara's emirs until the early 20th century, sits at the edge of the old town — part fortress, part royal town in its own right, and a reminder that Bukhara was a ruling power, not only a holy city. Its ramparts and the square below them anchor the western end of the historic centre.
At the other pole of old-town life is Lyab-i-Hauz, a rare surviving stone pond shaded by ancient chinar trees and ringed by madrasas and teahouses — the social heart of Bukhara then and now, where the day slows over tea. The Nadir Divan-Begi madrasa on its eastern side carries a famously un-Islamic portal of two phoenixes flying toward a sun-face, a small act of decorative rule-breaking that visitors enjoy spotting.
The Trading Domes and the Living Old Town
Bukhara sat astride the Silk Road as a merchant city, and its covered trading domes still stand at the old crossroads where the caravans once dealt: the Toki Zargaron of the jewellers, the Toki Telpak Furushon of the cap-sellers, the Toki Sarrofon of the money-changers, each a domed brick hall that today shelters craft stalls and workshops. Nearby, the small four-towered Chor Minar gatehouse, with its four blue-capped turrets, is one of the most distinctive silhouettes in the city.
What ties all of this together is that the spaces between the monuments are themselves old — lanes of former merchants' houses, quiet madrasas turned to workshops, and the everyday fabric of a medieval town that was never cleared away. Bukhara is walked and absorbed as much as it is ticked off.
Seeing Bukhara's Old Town
The historic centre is compact and made for walking, and a day covers the headline monuments comfortably, with a second day rewarding anyone who wants to let the place settle — to sit at Lyab-i-Hauz at dusk, wander the trading domes without a route, and watch the old town empty of day-trippers in the evening.
The walled town is the draw, but Bukhara province holds more beyond it — the emir's summer palace on the outskirts, the potters' town of Gijduvan, and the necropolises and shrines of the surrounding oasis — which the province of Bukhara takes up where this one ends.