Bukhara still trades where it always traded: under the brick domes built in the 1500s for jewellers, hatters and money-changers. Three days takes you from the Zargaron cupola to a working forge, a silk carpet loom and the city's produce bazaars.
The northernmost of the three surviving 1570s trading cupolas, still worked by jewellers. Stalls sell filigree silver, coral-and-turquoise Bukharan earrings and repoussé cuffs. Open roughly 09:00–19:00 daily; most sellers weigh silver in front of you.
A working forge on Hakikat Street run by the Shokirovs, sixth-generation smiths known for stork-headed scissors used by silk embroiderers. You watch the hammering, then buy off the bench. Open 09:00–18:00, closed Sunday afternoons.
The everyday food market west of the Ark, where Bukharans actually shop. Rows of dried apricots, black raisins, walnut-stuffed figs, saffron, cumin and mountain thyme, plus enamelled teapots and cotton bedding in the dry-goods aisles.
The hat-sellers' crossroads cupola, the largest of the three domes, now stacked with embroidered doppi skullcaps, karakul lambskin hats and ikat-lined jackets. Late afternoon light through the lantern openings is the best time to judge dye colours.
A domed 1577 silk hall with sunken floor and cool air, occupied by textile dealers selling adras and ikat by the metre, plus antique suzani panels. Sellers unroll pieces on the floor and will explain the pomegranate and scorpion motifs.
A courtyard workshop-shop near Lyab-i Hauz where miniature painters, bookbinders and papermakers sell direct, with fixed price tags instead of haggling. Good for small, flat, packable pieces such as painted papier-mâché boxes.
A production hall southeast of the old town where weavers knot silk rugs on vertical looms using natural indigo, madder and pomegranate-rind dyes. Free tour of the dye vats and looms, then a showroom with export paperwork.
Student cells around the 1622 courtyard now house one-room boutiques: hand-block-printed tablecloths, camel-wool scarves, lacquered spoons. Traders stay open until about 20:00 in summer, later than the trading domes.
The money-changers' dome on the canal, plus the family puppet studio beside it where papier-mâché heads for the Bukharan marionette theatre are moulded, painted and dressed in offcuts of ikat. Puppets are made to order in about two days.
Cells in the 1652 madrasah where zardozi embroiderers couch gold and silver wire onto velvet — the craft that once dressed the emirs. Slippers, skullcaps, waistcoats and framed panels, all stitched on frames in front of the shop.
The large modern bazaar on the city's northeastern edge where locals buy in bulk: cotton textiles, enamel and aluminium kitchenware, tea bricks, cheap chapan robes and household goods. Almost no tourists, so quoted prices start near the real ones.
The sunken 12th-century mosque now holds a carpet display, and the shops ringing its pit sell Gijduvan-school ceramics — bowls glazed in ishkor green and manganese brown by the Narzullaev family, sold with the potter's signature underneath.