Samarkand: A ‘living museum’ on the Silk Road grapples with a tourism boom

Tourists linger at the stalls as the lights come on, lending the square an air of mystery.

The Registan is part of historic Samarkand, a UNESCO World Heritage site. But this is more than a city of monuments. People live here; schools, shops and workshops are open, and old neighbourhoods stand alongside new districts.

UN News visited ahead of World Cities Day to ask: how can civil leaders preserve its heritage while it keeps growing?

That question is at the heart of Samarkand’s “Silk Road” International University of Tourism and Cultural Heritage, which trains specialists in both fields from a campus in the city centre.

The university’s rector, Professor Muhsinjon Kholmukhamedov, told UN News that for centuries Samarkand was a crossroads not only for trade, but for ideas, crafts and cultures, flourishing in the eighth and ninth centuries and again in the Timurid era, when it became a centre of science, culture and the arts.

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