Samarkand

Samarkand was already old when Alexander took her, already legendary when Marco Polo passed, and already blue when the rest of the world's cities discovered color: Timur made her his capital and tiled her in lapis and turquoise until the domes matched the sky they interrupt. The Registan — three madrasas facing a square in perfect, patient symmetry — remains what it has been for six centuries: the most beautiful classroom humanity ever built.

The sensible traveller stands in the Registan twice: at morning opening for the tilework's detail — including Sher-Dor's famous rule-breaking tigers —, and at dusk, when the facades go to ember and the swifts take over; climbs the mausoleum avenue of Shah-i-Zinda slowly, the way its name — 'the living king' — deserves; visits Ulugbek's observatory, where a Timurid prince measured the stars four centuries before telescopes; and eats plov where the wedding parties eat it: at noon, with green tea and no hurry.

The Guide's honesty: Samarkand is a living city wearing her monuments lightly — step one street behind the Registan and you are in ordinary, excellent Uzbekistan: bread ovens, gold teeth, wedding photographers —; the plov is a noon dish and the best pots are empty by two; dollars and euros change easily, but crisp bills only; and the trains from Tashkent are fast, cheap and civilized — book them like a local, a few days ahead.