No photograph prepares you for the scale of the Registan. Three madrasas face each other across a square that once held the markets of the most important trading city between China and the Mediterranean, their portals covered in turquoise and lapis tilework.
Samarkand rewards slow mornings. Arrive at the square before eight and you will share it with sweepers and pigeons. By ten the tour groups own it. The same rule applies at Shah-i-Zinda, the avenue of mausoleums that is the most concentrated tilework on earth.
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