If there is a center to Central Asia, it is Samarkand. It was already a thriving city when Alexander marched through, and it has seen empires rise and fall ever since. A main stop on most Silk Road routes, it also felt the wrath of Genghis Khan, who destroyed everyone and everything when he swept through.What stands now is due to Timur, the 14th-century despot who rose from obscurity to conquer most of the known world. Although he was almost as brutal as Genghis, he carted off an army of artisans from the lands he conquered. He then set them to work on building a capital city worthy of himself, mosques and madrassas that were unequalled in the world. Out of this came the blue-and-sable mosaic style that sets the tone of Central Asia to this day. Descendents such as Ulug Beg added the great Registan square to Samarkand, perhaps the greatest town square ever built. Babur and later descendents took a version of the art to Moghul India.
Timur didn't do anything small. His Bibi Khanum mosque had arches almost 40 meters (130 feet) high, comparable to the highest Gothic cathedrals. Even the Koran stand is taller than I am. Unfortunately, they did not hold up well in the unstable ground and fierce winds of Central Asia. Perhaps his architects, who tended to have a short life span anyway, did only what was necessary to satisfy the tyrant and avoid the executioner.
Soviet archeologists and then even more the independent Uzbeks have thrown so much money into restorations and reconstructions that it's hard to say any of it is authentic. The current Uzbek "president" styles himself an inheritor of Timur's greatness and has made Timur the nationalist hero, even if the old tyrant wasn't Uzbek. Still, even if it's a bit like Disneyland, it is very beautiful.
The most exquisite is a set of tombs built around the one small minaret that Genghis Khan left standing. The "teardrop mausoleum" that Timur built for his favorite niece and sister is the height of medieval tilework. Timur himself is buried on the other side of town under the world's largest piece of dark-blue jade. 
Not all of Timur's legacy was monumental. His grandson Ulug Beg was one of the greatest astronomers of his time, making a catalogue of stars that surpassed anything in Europe. Nothing remains above ground of his great observatory, but archeologists recently found the bottom third of the great sextant that once continued its arc three stories above. Although the great monuments are impressive, we made a point to get off the beaten track. The old Jewish quarter stands behind a wall of tourist shops designed to convince visitors that all of Uzbekistan is prosperous and modern. But one step through a well-concealed door took us out of this twilight zone into the real neighborhood where unrestored mosques, neighborhood baths and even a synagogue rubbed shoulders with ordinary people's houses. (Central Asia historically had a thriving Jewish community, but Soviet attitudes drove most of it to emigrate to Isreal.)
Nearby a small mosque marks a spot in ancient Samarkand that has seen continual worship since the 9th century.
Ancient Samarkand occupied a hill called Afrosiob to the northeast, and it was rediscovered and excavated over a hundred years ago. A small museum houses the most impressive murals I have seen from the Sogdian period (8th century CE) - better than those in the Hermitage!
We took a 25-kilometer detour to Hoja Ismail, the shrine of the scholar Ismail al-Bukhari, who made the most accurate collections of the hadith, the acts and words of the Prophet Mohammed. Although it is on the site of a tomb dating back to the 9th century, most of the construction is modern. But it is still very beautiful.
We took a day trip to Shakhrisabz, about 100 kilometers south of Samarkand. A small town today, it was the home of Timur, who left behind some ruins even larger than those at Samarkand. Since these have seen only minor restorations, we could imagine a real sense of the immensity of the construction.
The largest ruins were from Timur's palace. In its day, it had an entrance arch over 40 meters (130 feet) high and towers up to 60 meters (200 feet), almost twice what remains in this picture.
Shakhrisabz also holds Timur's family graveyard, a collection of imposing mausoleums. Timur built a crypt there for himself and probably rolled in his grave when his people insisted on burying him in Samarkand.
