Bukhara holds two thousand years of Silk Road history inside one walkable city. Beyond the Kalon and the Ark lie a 10th-century Samanid tomb, an emir's bug pit and Sufi shrines still drawing pilgrims. Three days for the layers most visitors walk past.
Central Asia's oldest surviving Islamic building, raised around 905 CE for the Samanid dynasty. Its 18,000 baked bricks are laid in patterns that shift as the sun moves. Silt buried it for centuries, which is why Genghis Khan's men never found it in 1220.
A pilgrimage site since the 12th century, capped by a Khorezm-style conical dome added under Timur around 1380. The spring inside is said to have been struck open by the prophet Job; it now feeds a small Museum of Water Supply.
Bukhara's oldest mosque, its carved 12th-century south facade sunk 4.5m below today's street level. Excavations underneath found a Buddhist temple and the Zoroastrian moon-idol bazaar that stood here first. Now a carpet museum.
The 12th-century open-air festival mosque built outside the city walls for Eid prayers, when the crowds outgrew every mosque inside. The Karakhanid mihrab wall carries original terracotta carving; Timurid rulers added the arcade in the 1500s.
The last emir's summer palace, completed in 1918 by craftsmen sent to St Petersburg to learn Russian styles. The mirrored ganch of the White Hall took Usto Shirin two years. Harem pool, peacock garden and a suzani embroidery museum.
The emirate's jail below the Ark's north wall, in use until the Red Army arrived in 1920. Cells, shackles and the notorious 6.5m bug pit where British officers Stoddart and Conolly were held before their execution in 1842.
The 1890s courtyard mansion of Bukhara's richest merchant family, later home to the Soviet republic's first premier, who was shot in Stalin's purge of 1938. Painted ceilings, separate men's and women's quarters, 19th-century costume rooms.
The emirs' official Friday mosque of 1712, placed directly opposite the Ark so the ruler had to cross the square on foot. Twenty painted elm columns, some 12m tall, double in the pool below — hence the local name, mosque of forty pillars.
A walled city of the dead at Sumitan, 5km west, built 1560-63 by Abdullah Khan II over the grave of Abu Bakr Said, a descendant of the Prophet. Mosque, khanaka and courtyard after courtyard of family dakhmas and Juybari sheikh tombs.
The jewellers' dome of 1569, largest of three surviving crossroads bazaars raised by Abdullah Khan II where caravan streets met. Its 16-sided drum vented the summer heat; moneychangers and hatmakers worked the other two domes nearby.
The 1544 shrine of the 14th-century saint who founded the Naqshbandi Sufi order, 12km east of the city. Pilgrims walk three circuits of the tomb; the khanaka beside it is where dervishes practised silent dhikr. Still fully active.
A 1555 neighbourhood mosque and khanaka set on its own hauz, with a mihrab covered in gold kundal painting and rare blue-and-white mosaic. Elders still play backgammon under the awning at dusk — the mahalla life the Old City grew from.