🇹🇲 Turkmenistan
Ashgabat
Ashgabat (Aşgabat — "City of Love" in Turkmen, population 1.1 million — the capital of Turkmenistan and one of the most extraordinary cities in the world) is simultaneously one of the most expensive cities to visit (the requirement for foreign tourists to hire a mandatory government guide for all activities makes independent travel effectively impossible) and one of the most visually spectacular: the city that Saparmurat Niyazov ("Turkmenbashi" — "Father of all Turkmen") and his successor Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow rebuilt from scratch after the 1948 earthquake (the Ashgabat earthquake of October 6, 1948 — magnitude 7.3, killing between 10,000 and 176,000 people (the death toll was classified as a state secret under Stalin and has never been definitively established): the earthquake destroyed virtually the entire city) as a showcase of Turkmen national identity. The result is the most unusual capital city in the world: an entire city rebuilt in brilliant white marble (the Guinness World Record for the "highest density of white marble-clad buildings in the world" — awarded to Ashgabat in 2013), dominated by golden statues (including the rotating golden statue of Turkmenbashi that tracked the sun by revolving to always face the sun, until it was removed in 2010), enormous monuments (the Neutrality Arch — the 75m tripod arch topped by a gold statue of Turkmenbashi that rotated to face the sun), and the most elaborate national symbols: the 8-pointed star (the Rub el Hizb — the symbol of the Seljuk Turkic heritage visible on every building), the horse (the Akhal-Teke — the most ancient and most beautiful breed of horse in the world: the golden-coated Turkmen horse with the metallic sheen that is the primary national symbol of Turkmenistan), the dog (the Alabay — the Central Asian shepherd dog: the second most important Turkmen national animal), and natural gas (the Darvaza Gas Crater (the "Door to Hell" — the burning gas crater in the Karakum desert 260km north of Ashgabat that has been burning continuously since a Soviet drilling accident in 1971)).